you’re completely right here. It’s necessary to ‘fire’ those bad clients and focus on the good ones. Just the 80/20 principle in work.

But when you’re small, you can be dependent on those bad clients. Sometimes, when you have really bad luck, your first client will be one. In that case you might have a failure right at the start.

I see a lot of freelancers and IM’ers giving up because their first project was a failure, or their ‘employer’ didn’t pay. But it’s about persistency. Without it you won’t succeed in business.

Well, here’s to getting better clients!

-Dave

In the beginning, when a business is “growing up”, like you said, cash-flow is tight. Since there is a minimal amount of income, it is almost mandatory to take the jobs which at a later point you eventually wouldn’t. Also, it is only during this time where you can figure out, essentially, “right from wrong” in respect to clients (which ones to aim for, keep, drop or deny) and the services your company will provide.

This doesn’t mean to try and build houses when you and your company’s specialty is accounting, however if you don’t want to do taxes for someone (let’s just say your preference is only logging transactions for a company, etc – for example and clarity sake) you most likely will have to, to get income.

Being less picky in the beginning is also a way to start networking. Networking yourself and your business to others, etc.