Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

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My wife and I love to go to the movies. We average going to about 50 to 60 a year. I wind up walking out of about half of the movies we attend, while she has walked out of one in the 32 years we’ve been married. I don’t mind walking out. I always bring a book to read or a harmonica to practice and if the movie isn’t very good, I simply leave.

We even have a routine before I depart. I’ll lean over and ask if she’s enjoying the movie and she almost always says no. I’ll ask if she wants to leave and she always (with one Ben Stiller exception) says no again. What’s fascinating about this is that not once has she not liked a movie at the midpoint and eventually come to enjoy it. Not once. However, she stays every time.

I bring this up because a client fired me a few weeks ago. We’d only worked with them for about two months, but from the first creative meeting there was a slight tension. I tried changing the team, bringing in what we thought would work, bringing in exactly what they asked for, meeting face to face, conference calls – nothing worked. We had more than one conversation in-house about whether this could be fixed and how we could do it. No answers. And yet, we didn’t resign. Being fired came as a relief to us as I’m sure it did to the client, so why didn’t we simply resign?

I looked back over the past few years and can’t think of a single time where, after we had tried everything and I still had that gut feeling that things were going south, everything turned around and became positive. Again, not once. And yet, I’m still hesitant to walk away from clients. It might be fear of loss of income or reputation, maybe I feel a sense of obligation to finish what we started, perhaps I’m just too lazy to make the change. Or maybe I simply believe – like my wife and her movies – that things are going to get better.

I share this because we’ve all been in the situation of working with clients, customers, vendors, bosses and employees well past their expiration date, and yet we still keep plugging along. I’m not a quitter and I don’t advocate an early cut-and-run policy, but reason has to play a role. I mentioned the sense of relief I felt when I got the call, a call I should have made. It’s caused me to re-evaluate.

Do you have any clients, vendors or employees whose permanent absence would be a relief? If there’s even one, why hold on? Why not take the proactive step and sever a relationship that isn’t working and has little to no prospect of improving?

I’ve now made that a new standard for my business and professional relationships. If I would be relieved by them (client, vendor or employee) ending the relationship, I’ll simply end it myself. The truth is, they’re probably feeling exactly the same way (these things are rarely, if ever, one way) and will be relieved themselves. Either way, I’ll feel better and it will open new possibilities and opportunities. In the meantime, my wife’s movie is just about over, so I’ve got to go.

Scott Harris is the owner of Mustang Marketing, a full-service marketing agency in Thousand Oaks.

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