"My Clients missed sessions and owe me a LOT of MONEY...Now what?"

Today I want to answer a question from a coach who just started his business about three months ago. 

This coach currently has 10 clients and mentions that two of those clients owe him money and he asks me what should he do in this delicate situation. 

Now, there's two things that we have to do:

1.You must self-reflect why those clients still owe you money?

If you're running a business and you have people that owe you money the first thing I want you to do is go to your bathroom and flick the light on and look at yourself in the mirror.

When you do this I want you to ask yourself why did I let this relationship get to this point where they owe me money because at the end of the day it starts with you!

It's your business and it's not their fault because I know from experience that when this happens it's easy to think well it is their fault because they owe me money but the reality is there was probably a miscommunication issue between you and your clients. 

When there isn't good levels of communication between you and your clients there are no set expectations when they join your program which means they are going to pay you whenever they want to and they'll even decide IF they pay you. 

I see many coaches who don't take responsibility with their business and when you don't have full control of the business your clients will be able to do whatever they want with you.  

2. Cut them from your program FAST!

Many coaches are afraid to cut clients from their programs and I can assure you it's not the most fun bit of running a business but if the client already owes you money then they have already broken your business agreement which means they shouldn't be allowed to continue training with you. 

When this happens I want you to pick up the phone and call each one of them and say the following:

"Hey Ms Jones,

Coming up I'm moving in a different direction with my business and I'm not going to be able to train you guys anymore. If you would like to train with me in the future here's how I'm going to be doing it and if you can't abide by the business rules you won't be able to train with me"

When you do this you're essentially kicking them out of your program and you shouldn't have to feel bad about that because at the end of the day you know there's a lot of trainers out there that are brand new to business and they're trying to do it full time
like you which means you have to protect yourself.

If you're not protecting yourself no one's going to protect you because you may have a family to feed if you're trying to do this full time and if someone owes you money they owe you money and don't need to be let into your business. 

When you start cutting bad customers out of your business them out of your business you will start attracting people who do respect you and your time.

I hope this helps you, 

-Ben