1 week ago I fired my best paying client. I was making over 45K per year just from this client. Overall… this was a BIG fish, the type of client people tell you: you need to get it and lock if for life!

But I fired them. I quit. I decided it was time to go… and that my life was going to be better WITHOUT them, instead of them…. but to understand why I decided to say said bye bye to $45000 extra per year, I needed to go back to basics.

You see, a lot has changed since the last 2 months… I have been working like crazy,  trying to keep up with Google, products, clients, coaching… you name it.

I also have a life , so I try to spend as much time with my kids, my wife, and try to be the overall amazing dad. Karate lessons, Soccer training, soccer match on the weekend, swimming lessons, birthday parties, sick days from school, holidays, etc…

So if things are so busy and in fact are going so well… why change, why say to a “Big-fish-type-of-client”

The answer is : PASSION.

Or even better: Lack of passion.

You see, the problem when you deal with Internet Marketing, with SEO… is that you try to tell the world, (and Google)  that your client is simply the best in the world.

You want people to visit your client site, you want people to pay your client some money, you want LEADS (Oh that’s the word they used to scream at me – WE NEED MORE LEADS GABRIEL)…. but at the end of the day, one big question remained :

Are these people in fact good?

Seriously.

Is this company in fact REMARKABLE ?

Are they even doing something good for the world?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to go on and claim I want my clients to “save the world” or even “save the whales” or any Miss Universe type of statement… but when you work for over 2 years with a customer you quickly realized if your customer, if their product, if their message is … well… shit or not.

And that’s the problem: I was working with people full of shit.

People that didn’t believe in the idea of providing value over selling crap.

People that didn’t believe branding is the way you run your business, instead of the “service” you pay a PR company to “produce” for you.

People that didn’t believe in listening to their customers… because they where too busy screaming : BUY FROM US NOW.

People with no passion in their market, and without the capacity to understand that the market has a sh*t radar more powerful than any Adwords campaign.

But when you get paid a small salary per year…

Obviously quitting is not easy.

and firing your customer is not fun . (well a bit)

 

But the reality is that this is May 2012 and mediocrity can’t win .

You may be ahead for a while but sooner or later mediocre companies that are not willing to believe that Content is King and Marketing is the Queen * (Taken from Gary V ) will fail.

So that’s why I fired my client.

Because only by firing a mediocre company I can guarantee to achieve a higher level or personal success.

Because when you work with mediocrity, you learn from it.

From now on… I may choose only to work with future champions.

People that are willing to achieve greatness by providing value, energy, and quality instead of achieving authority status by taking social and business shortcuts.

Am I a dreamer?

Hell yes…. but so far the coolest people I know, are … well dreamers.