259 - Dealing with Difficult Clients with Rachel Utain-Evans

time will come. There are clients out there, who whether for reasons that are reasonable or not, will give you pushback. And when they do it is in your best interest. And ultimately, it's in their best interest. For you to be prepared. You need to be grounded, not only in a legal sense with like your policies and your procedures, and all those kinds of things. But you also need the confidence and the ability to communicate that confidence so that you are

protected. They feel confident like they can trust you or they know you know what, this is not someone who is going to allow me to push them around. And then they decide to go in a different direction. So all of that is really easy to kind of say and pontificate about and know on an intellectual level. But being in that situation and handling it well, is a whole different kit and caboodle, which is why I am extremely excited to share my conversation today with my

friend, Rachel uten Evans. She's a photographer in the Philadelphia area. And I just love the conversation that I'm about to share with you. She and I chatted and honestly, at some point, I looked at the clock and I was like, Oh, I have to wrap things up. I could have gone on for a long time. This is a subject that honestly no matter how long you have been in business, it comes up. And it feels different and fresh and hard, essentially every single time. But it does get easier.

And it doesn't have to take a long, long time to make moves toward getting easier. So with that, I am going to cue the music and introduce Rachel. Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken. And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more

sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. Rachel, welcome to this can't be that hard. I am so excited to have you on the show today. How have you been?

margins a little bit. Let's start out with having you just kind of give everybody a little background on who you are and where you work and how you came to feel so passionately on this topic.

quote unquote real job. But you know, I gave it a shot in 2011 and here I am 12 years later, so yeah, yeah, it's working out pretty well. So I am a primarily a family and birth photographer in Philadelphia. I'm also a trained doula, but I'm kind of at the point in my career where I kind of am doing all sorts of things. I do event photography now. I work with nonprofits. I've done a few weddings. It's I'm kind of in that really fun part of like, yeah, that sounds

great. Let's let's do it. And I get to just kind of flex those creative muscles and it's really great. Love it. And yeah, so I've been in business for a long time and I've been able to really kind of organically grow my business and also my own confidence in my business over

these years. You know, learning as I go making the mistakes and having each mistake be a lesson as I as I kind of move on, and in the last year, and I don't know if this was like a pandemic thing I did hear some some wires I think went haywire after the pen. endemic Yeah, I started having these really interesting

client interactions. And, you know, I was able to identify that earlier in my career, they probably would have sent me off the rails, I would have kind of had this self confidence spiral and not really knowing what to do with it. And each time, even though each one was not a super comfortable interaction to have, I felt very prepared, I felt very confident, you know, I can go into a little bit more detail about what each of those

instances was. But it was a great moment of both Oh, yeah, I'm really, I'm really in a great place with my business where I've been doing this so long that I feel really solid, in representing myself this way and defending my business when I need to. And then it also gave me this really interesting insight when I would share these stories of these instances with other female photographer

friends that I have. And I was getting a lot of these responses of like, you know, this really aggressive client was demanding these things for me, and my friends were like, You should just give him what he wants. So he'll leave you alone? And I was like, No, that's, I'm not going to do that. And why why? Why do we think that that's an appropriate way to be a business

owner. And it's not just, you know, to deal with someone being aggressive, but especially when you're a business owner, and most of us are sole sole business owners, it's just us. We set we design the business, we set the rules. And so we should be portraying ourselves as the authority of our business. We are literally the authority, it's just as we make the choices, and we should not be bending to, you know, big feelings. Yeah. That might be coming up.

great in theory. And it's when these situations arise, and we're the one in the hot seat who has to respond to the email, or pick up the phone to call someone to, you know, handle an issue. And it is whether it's culturally prescribed, or whether it is our sort of artistic sensitive selves or whatever. We tend to be, you know, people pleasers, and we want to make things smooth and easy. And we don't want to deal

with conflict. And so when we are in that spot, it's almost like we need a toolkit of ways two ways to respond that walk that line between being not only professional, but also like, you know, with an eye on good customer service and acknowledging that like, we are not perfect, and maybe there was a mistake or an issue or whatever. But but making sure that we're being clear eyed about whether it's that or like somebody is trying to push us around, which happens. Yeah,

preparation. And that's one of the things that I recognize, you know, every lesson, I always say every lesson that I learned becomes a line in my contract. Because you only need to learn that lesson once and then you can protect yourself from it ever happening again. And the protection is preparation and education. And so that's why I say like, the number one thing that makes me feel really confident in my business practices. Number one is my contract, have had a lawyer look

over it. I feel really secure in what's in there. I feel it's fair. And I make it readily available so that everybody should be read. I know lots of people don't read contracts, but you're an adult, I'm going to give you the contract. It's your job to read it. If you sign it, you're agreeing to what I have in my contract. Yeah. And the whole purpose of our contracts as business owners is to protect us in those situations is to give us that foundation, where

it's not an argument. You can't argue with me over whether or not you think this is fair, you signed this thing. And I gave you a chance to disagree with what you said before you signed it right now this is our mutual agreement of how we're going to proceed. You can say you don't like it, but it doesn't change the fact that you signed the contract and I mean, there's always going to be people who

will try to push that line. But I think for we us as business owners, it's a having the contract and then the nice kind of partner of that is having a lawyer that you feel really comfortable going to and saying like oh, this this person is pushing back against my contract. I just want to triple check with you. That this is this is airtight in the Is this correct? And the lawyer can confirm that to you. And you know, having those two things

backing you up? That that is a huge part of my confidence. Yeah. And then the other part of that is the client education that goes into before they hire you. That is the other thing that gives me a really solid

foundation. You know, I show you all of my prices upfront all of my policies upfront, you have plenty of time to look at the contracts and ask me questions like, I have made every possible opportunity give you all the pertinent information to ask every question, you know, that's as much as I can do, I can't sit you down and force you to read it, I can provide it to you. And then you can sign it, give me your credit card, you know, whatever it is, you're joining into that agreement from your

end. But I've checked off all those boxes. And so then later, if you come back, and you have a problem with any of those things, I'm starting on such a solid ground. Yeah, I can see that you're really upset. And I can also send you this PDF of this contract designs. Yeah, your chance to have a problem with any of that stuff. So

my pricing. Let them know what their title look like their total look like? Oh, yeah, actually, um, take a few things out, it was a full back and forth, comprehensive compensation, paid, delivered all the products. And after I had finished delivering all the products, the other member of the couple sent me a very aggressive email saying that I had misled the other person. And I basically tricked them into spending all of this money, and how dare I, and I should absolutely give them X, Y and Z

and compensation. And, and in one in the end, that would be a very great example of very aggressive language. Wow. Yeah. Very, you know, how are you going to fix this? Because you have made a mistake. And we you know, we had been wrong, you know, very, there was no nuance it was very much, this is your fault. And I didn't even blink. I mean, I was, you know, the emotional side of me was like, well, that really sucks, because I just thought we had this great, you know, experience.

Yes, so happy. And they, you know, and I just very calmly downloaded the PDFs of the contract that they signed the invoice that they paid the pricing, I even have a little box at the bottom of my pricing sheet that they get before they hire me that says yes, I've read this pricing. And you can be sure that after that experience, I added another box to my contract that says, I have read

the pricing. And I agree to the policy, you know, every time this happens, it's like, Oh, I'm just gonna make it even more foolproof. And that was the end of that. They got the physical proof that what they were saying was untrue. And I never heard from them again. And that felt that felt great. Yeah. I had a slightly more complicated situation a few months later, where a family had hired me for like a maternity newborn combination. And we did the maternity session, we did the

you know, image purchase. I delivered the products. Everybody was very happy. The baby was born. They scheduled the newborn session and two days before the newborn session. I got an email that night you know what? We've changed our minds. You know, I at first I was like, you know, they're probably I'm very kind of lifestyle documentary stat session, you know, style. Maybe they decide they want more classic like studio newborn set, you know,

that wasn't so bothered. I was disappointed but okay, fine. Great. I wish you luck. I hope the baby's good. And the next email was well, yeah, but Where's where's our refund for the newborn session? And I? Oh, you mean the non refundable session fee that holds? You mean that one? And we went back and

forth quite a bit. They were just, you know, very quickly devolved into very aggressive again, I owe you have you you trick people into spending all this money and your policies are so hidden and your pricing is so hidden? And again, I said, Oh, you mean all of this policies and the prices that I sent here, the emails where I sent them to you and you know, Here's the email where you said you were

very happy with everything. You know, it was just, it made me feel very solid that I had all of these things to respond with. He pushed back hard enough that I did eventually go to my lawyer to say, here's the situation, you know, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge amount of money, but it's the essence of the situation principle. Yeah, absolutely. The principle of it, you know, and luckily, I have a kick ass lawyer who was like, absolutely no, do not give

in to him. Your your, your contract is solid, your policies are solid. I'll double check them for you. Yep, everything looks great. You have my permission to block his email. And, you know, I won't lie, I still had stomach aches about it for a good while, because, you know, it doesn't feel good to have somebody bully you and, and, you know, accuse you of things, even if you know that that's wrong. Yeah. But professionally, I felt very secure that like, Okay, this is, this is a sucky thing that's

happening in my business. I'm so lucky. I've made it, you know, 12 years, and this is the first time this has really happened. That was the moment because that I, you know, that was like an ongoing, he wouldn't leave me alone for a while. And that was actually the time when I kept going to all like, all my photographer friends, like, oh, have you ever dealt with something like this? What would you do? And a lot of them were saying, like, it's just a 70.

Yeah, just given. And I just knew, you know, a giving him what he wanted was not going to make him happy. It was going to make him feel justified and that it might have even made it worse, because now I am acquiescing to this thing he's demanding. Who knows now where he's going to take it? Sure. It just really felt like I had to shut it down at the start. But it bothered me that so many people were saying, like, it's just not worth it. Like, just

give in. And I felt like that's, that doesn't really do us justice, as business owners to do that.

was my mindset. And sure enough, the couple got back to me, and they were super happy and whatever. And then this like mother of the bride came out of nowhere, she had never been my primary contact. I was. And she like sent me the just like dagger in the heart kind of email about how I had I mean, I'm sure what it came down to was she wasn't pleased with how she looked in something. I mean, we all know that that's like what ends up happening. But she was saying, and it was very

aggressive. I mean, it was the same kind of thing where she was, you know, demanding this, that and the other. And this was early enough in my business that I didn't. I knew kind of intellectually that she didn't really have any legal ground to stand on. But I did question myself where I was like, Maybe I should, you know, offer and I was trying to do because with weddings, of course, it is

tricky. And if you shoot births and events and stuff like that, like that's a one shot deal, you know, you can't go do those things. So three, stage it Yeah, right. So I'm sitting there, you know, racking my brain about like, how can I make this right? How can I make this right? And eventually, it occurred to me like, I, I did make this right, like, I didn't do anything wrong here. She's unhappy for whatever reason, and I'm sorry that she's unhappy. But I can't fix that.

And it's not something that I'm going to financially fix. Because that was the other she was kind of poking at that, like, we need money for this. And I came to find out down the road that mother of the bride had gone and gotten a full refund on the wedding cake, which is crazy. She had gotten a bunch of money back from the florist. And I was like, Oh, this is like her hobby. Like she goes and complains and gets aggressive and gets up in people's faces. And I was

God, I'm so sorry. And, you know, how can we make it better? And all you know, and being super aggressive, be like, Fu, you're wrong? You know, right, what we really what a lot of us maybe would like to say, Yeah, you know, and what I have found, you know, this is the extreme example of kind of what I'm talking about. But when you are being met with that sort of extreme aggression, like, serene neutrality is the best way to respond. No emotion, no passive language, no super aggressive

language, just facts. You know, and both times that I dealt with these men who were coming at me about how I run my business, I did not address any of the emotional stuff in their emails. I didn't say like, I'm so sorry, you're upset? I'm so you know, I'm so sorry. You feel cuz? You know, I didn't. I didn't apologize for any of their big feelings, because I was very sure that their feelings were their own and not my responsibility, right. So I didn't even I didn't even

address it. We didn't even talk about it. In the email. All I said was here, you know, that one first case, here's the PDF of the contract. Here's the PDF of the invoice, here's a copy of the, you know, here's the information that you need to clear up what you're what you're talking about. In that case, actually, he was demand, you know, they hadn't purchased all of the digital images. And he was demanding that I give them

to him. And so in that particular instance, I said, if you would like to purchase the remainder of your gallery, this is how much it would cost me to send you an invoice. Please let me know if you'd like me to do that for you. All the best. And then we archive that email. And I never heard from him again. With the other one. Again, it was so hard to not respond as a human being Yes. Like, you know, they're being so hurtful. Yeah. And you want to say, Hey, you're

being so hurtful? Yeah. How can you possibly think you deserve any of these things that you're asking of me? A human being, you're asking me a human being to take this abuse from you and give you something? Yes, this is not the universe that we're operating in. And again, I wrote those versions of the emails out some of them I even sent to my lawyer of like, this is what I'd really like to say. And she would write back and say just

say just the facts ma'am. There there is no refund on non refundable session fees here again as a copy of the contract for your records,

don't need to debate you. You know, maybe you have a client we've gone through the process with and they are upset about the way their photos look or the way that a you know, an album turned out you know, whatever it might be like an actual customer service level problem. But again, you don't have to kind of throw yourself under the wheel. You go and you check your you know, you check your lists I did I do all of the things that I expect of myself as a business. Sometimes you didn't check about

you right? I didn't you know, proof this thing. or whatever you can absolutely own up to that. Yeah. But something that I saw several years ago that I really loved, and I tried to use even in those situations of like, if you're somebody who's chronically late, don't, you know, when you finally show up, don't say, oh my god, I'm so sorry, I'm late, my car broke down. And my kids had to that, you know, like, don't don't show up apologetic and giving excuses, show up with gratitude

to the other party. So, you know, thank you so much for being patient, thank you so much for waiting, you know, shift the shift the focus on to the energy that they're giving, right. And so you know, you have a client who's upset about something, thank you so much for bringing this to my attention, I'm absolutely going to contact my printer and you know, resolve this issue, I had a, like a canvas show up with the hanger on the wrong part of the picture, and it was gonna be

upside down. And, you know, my client was like, I'm, I'm upset. This is a really high quality piece. This is supposed to be like a fine art piece in our house. And I'm like, You're absolutely right, I'm gonna look into this, thank you for giving me the chance to, you know, make this right, you know, it was much more in that realm of speak, as opposed to, oh, my God, please forgive me. You're

right. I'm so sad, you know, because then you're putting the onus on the other person to then focus it back on you and say, Oh, it's okay. I'm so sorry. You know, you're focusing more on that interaction, rather than Yep, we've identified a problem. And now we're going to

to reward that behavior. For one second, I don't want that person hiring me again, I don't want them telling you to hire me, like, you know, there is unfortunately, the potential that somebody like that will go and leave a really bad review. And that is a reality in our businesses. I do think that most people out there, if you, hopefully, you're doing enough screening that you don't have these clients all the time, right? Like, you don't want to just that that is a whole

different situation. If you have lots of these clients, there's a there is an issue. But when you get the occasional one off, I think that most of us out there reading reviews, can can read that. And the nice thing on Google or you know, wherever else people are leaving reviews, is most of the time you have the opportunity to respond to a

review. So, you know, being able to, like, restate what your version of the situation is, again, in that, like, what did you call it like something serene, like perfectly serene? Oh, neutral, and neutral? And you know, responding as like the voice of reason. Having that one bad review in and among a whole bunch of good reviews? It is what it is like no big deal. Yeah.

scenario. And I'm like, Ah, somebody's gonna see this one unhinged review and be like this, you know, and I actually had a session recently, where the woman who had hired me, we were chatting, oh, I've been following you on Instagram. And I checked all your reviews there. So I, you know, they're so amazing, except for that one. And I first was like, oh, no, she's the one but then we

chatted about it. And she was like, yeah, it was clearly like, it didn't fit all of the over 100 other reviews that I've had. And I also kind of thought about, you know, what you referenced if like, you don't want those people who are going to kind of push your boundaries. And I kind of thought, you know, what, if somebody's going to look at my over 105 star reviews and see the one negative review, and that's why they don't hire me. I think that's probably okay. You probably didn't want

to work with that person. Yeah, you know, or if they didn't even just send me an email, like, Oh, I really want to work with you. And I'm, I have a question, what is this person referencing? And I can, I can explain, you know, at least that's what I'm telling myself right now.

And I want to actually take this specifically because I think The elephant in the room here is that you and I both have been in business for a long time. And there is a certain amount of built in confidence that comes with longevity. Yep. For someone who is new, I don't think and you can certainly feel free to disagree with me. But I don't think that that is a reason were like, well, because I'm still new, you know, I feel like I should go and like go the extra

mile, whatever. I could see somebody sort of talking themselves into that. And I certainly see it all over, you know, the Facebook forums where people are like, oh, you should go back and, you know, like, offer them some mow their grass, in addition to everything else like, so what would your suggestions be for someone who, let's say they're just starting out there? They feel, you know, even if on the outside, it's like the duck above the water? You're, you know, placid and

whatever. And beneath? What would you say to someone at that juncture? Who is, you know, confronted with an issue? Or who is really worried about potentially being confronted in a situation?

act. You know, I think there's a lot of folks when they're first starting out, you know, you have the imposter syndrome, you don't have a ton of confidence, a lot of folks kind of go into their early business years, very, almost apologetically, from the outset of like, I don't really know what I'm doing, please forgive me, you know, preparing for the mistakes before they happen. I don't think you have

to do that. I think that you know, starting off fresh in your business, you can do the same things that we've been talking about, you can get a contract, there's, you know, there's the law, Todd, there are a lot of resources out there where you can buy a template contract, you go in, and you customize it for yourself, and then you find a lawyer in your area who works with professionals in your field and you pay them, you know, that is one of the costs of starting a business and it is absolutely

worthwhile, it's a high value to pay a lawyer for a couple of hours to go through your contract, make sure that it's great, then you have that from the beginning, you don't have to go through all of the, you know, really sharp learning curves of oh, that should have been my contract, you'll still run into things, there are still things as you, you know, I really would love that to never happen again, and you'll go put that on your

contract. But starting off with that really solid footing, I think is something that everybody can do, you don't have to be in business for a decade, to then, you know, pay a lawyer to make sure your contract is solid, I do think there's a little bit of fake it till you make it in those early years, and, you know, in circumstances after them, but part of what I do even now, when I look at my emails that I'm writing to clients is I check, you know, I have a mental list, but you

could make a list next to your computer screen of the most commonly used kind of passive words that we tend to throw into things when we're feeling insecure. Things like just only if maybe could you know all of these things that give a little bit of space of like, maybe I don't really know what I'm talking about. But if you agree, I guess we could do it this way, you know, and editing, you know, aside from looking for those specific words, say things in as few sentences as possible, be

efficient. And that way it gives you less space to add in that kind of cushioning language of just if they're asking how much your session is, here's the session fee. This is what it covers. This is the next step. I would love to chat if you have any other questions like it doesn't have to be a whole lot more than that. Yeah. Because if you start, you know, oh, this

yourself. You know that I'm a big fan, anybody who lives And so this podcast knows that I am a huge fan of getting on the phone. But and I'll put a big asterisk beside that when you've got someone who is aggressively like coming at, you definitely keep a written record of everything that's happening. So that's a good time to go back and forth via email.

sort of thing. But if you're gonna get on the phone and make excuses, and apologies and all that sort of thing, and like, immediately be like, nevermind, my prices are a quarter of what I just said, then you're not ready, like, and that's okay.

But it sounds like you, but you're just going to you're going to practice not apologizing for what you're saying, you're going to, you know, even things of like, if you decide to book with me, and instead say, when you decide to book with me, this will be the next step, just those little tweaks in how you communicate to your client is going to put them in a different mindset. And then if you do get on the phone, think about how you wrote it out in your email and do the same

thing. Just go through the bullet points, say I'm going to explain how my sessions worked. You first you're going to pay the session fee, it's going to hold your spot on my calendar, we're going to have an amazing session. It'll last about an hour, couple weeks, let you know, say everything is if it's a fact. And it's still neutral. You're not being aggressive. You're not like you absolutely, you know, yep, it's just serene and neutral. Yeah, here's the

information. And if they push back, then you can have a more dynamic conversation about like, oh, gosh, are you while you're, you know, the images aren't included in the session fee? Nope. And what I found is that my clients really appreciate being able to see the images before they decide what they're going to purchase, and it works out really well. And I'm here to help you the whole way, I'm really great at helping people make decisions and pick out the images they're gonna love

forever. And that's the same thing. I'm gonna say my email and you get, you get more of my personality hearing out of my voice. But the message is the same, the wording is the same. I'm not going to try to sound more formal in my email, if that's not how I communicate. Yes, I

feel nervous. I don't know. So if that tricks, I'm trying to help anybody else.

Let me know if you have any questions, you know, because and that's a big part of finding clients that are going to be a good fit for you too, is, the more upfront you are with what you provide and what it's going to cost and how valuable you think it is. And I have literally said to people, if this is not in your budget, by all means, please do not book

me. Yeah, I you know, I do not want to work with people that this feels like pulling teeth with you, I want you to be so excited to spend the money on what I'm going to create for you. And that's you know, that's why it's so difficult when people try to come back and say but you trip and I'm like, That is why would I do that? Why? Why would that I would have everybody coming to me saying oh my god, I can't believe these prices. That sounds terrible.

Why would I have done that? I would never hide the information from the person that I want to be excited about. You know,

call it open book mentoring. So really, anywhere that you are in your business career, anywhere you are in your creative career, if there's just something that you feel stuck on, and you need somebody to really, you know, kind of help you get over that hump, or, you know, turn the light on where you've been a

little bit stuck. That that's really the type of work that I really love doing with other photographers is helping helping you look at things in a different way and making you feel confident.