I lost a $900 client

I've been sitting with that sentence for days, trying to figure out how to say it without making it sound like a business update. Because it doesn't feel like a business update.

He'd been with me for a while. One of those clients you stop thinking about in terms of invoices because the relationship just... works.

And then one message changed the texture of everything.

He needed to pause. Something was happening in his personal life. He didn't give me details upfront, and I didn't ask for them; that's not my place. But as the conversation unfolded, the picture came through anyway.

Divorce. A whole life reorganizing itself on the other side of the screen.

I read the message twice. And I didn't know what to say first, the professional thing or the human thing. I went with the human thing.

What struck me afterward wasn't the $900. It was the reminder that there is always a person on the other side of the screen. Always. There is someone carrying something you cannot see. Business teaches you to track metrics and protect your margins. It doesn't always teach you to hold that truth.

I'm still learning how to hold both, honestly.

But here's what the loss also exposed, something I added to one of the modules inside the Digital Neighbor Academy (DNA), and something this situation made undeniable:

You cannot afford to have your income sitting in single clients.

Life can happen, ANYTIME! Divorce. Job loss. A health scare. A season where they simply cannot show up the way they want to. It will happen. And when it does, if your revenue is resting on that one relationship, you feel it immediately. In your chest before you even open your bank app.

Now, the answer isn't to care less. The answer is to build systems that don't require perfect conditions to hold.

One client leaving should sting. It shouldn't spiral. Epain me o! But your gal is all right.

I don’t even know how to end this post. Phew!

JOIN the DNA WAITLIST here

xoxo