PODCAST: Season 7, Episode 15
Are you adjusting yourself for certain clients without even realising it? Not in an obvious, dramatic way but the small stuff. The cancellation fee you didn’t charge. The message you answered first because you knew there’d be “a thing” if you didn’t. The boundary you softened because you didn’t want to seem rigid.
In this solo episode, Mills gets into something that rarely gets talked about in the online business world: how the wrong-fit client doesn’t just cost you time and energy they cost you yourself. And that is expensive in ways that don’t show up on a spreadsheet.
Wrong-Fit Clients: Why It’s Not Just an Ideal Client Problem
This episode goes deeper than ideal client work. You can have a client who ticks every box on paper right niche, right investment, right goals — and still find yourself showing up as a slightly adjusted, more managed, less-you version of yourself when you work with them. That gap is what Mills is unpacking here.
Topics covered in this episode:
- The “override pattern” what it is, why it happens, and what it’s actually pointing to
- The adjustment tax: the hidden energy cost of becoming a different version of yourself for specific clients
- Why responding instead of leading shifts the power dynamic in your client relationships
- How to audit your client base to identify who brings out your best work
- The structural fixes that stop the wrong-fit dynamic from building in the first place
The Override, The Adjustment Tax, and Who’s Actually Running the Show
Mills breaks this down into three patterns worth paying attention to.
The Override is when you have a policy, a boundary, a standard — and you break it for a specific client. Not because it’s the right call, but because something gets activated in you. Guilt. A need to keep the peace. A fear of disappointing someone. That override isn’t random. It’s always pointing to something.
The Adjustment Tax is what it costs you. The extra mental load. The over-preparing, over-explaining, over-delivering that only happens with certain people. The session you finish feeling flat, even though nothing went technically wrong.
Responding instead of leading is the pattern most people don’t clock until Mills spells it out: going to a specific client’s message first — not because it’s urgent, but because something in you knows what happens if you don’t. The moment you’re managing a client rather than leading them, they’re running the relationship. Not maliciously. But it happened, and you allowed it.
Client Audit: Six Questions to Ask Yourself Right Now
If you want to know which client relationships are costing you more than they should, start here.
- Which client do you become a slightly different version of yourself for?
- Is there a client you have never enforced your cancellation or rescheduling policy with — and what reason have you told yourself?
- When you open your messages, is there someone you go to first — not out of urgency, but out of something else?
- Of your last five client sessions, which ones left you feeling energised and which left you flat?
- Are there clients you over-prepare for, over-explain to, or over-deliver for beyond your usual standard?
- If you stripped out the relationships that feel hard to hold, what would your business actually feel like?
Mills offers a full audit to your inbox click the link
Let’s Connect
Instagram: @mills_gray — Mills loves sending voice notes back
If this one resonated, share it with a business owner who’s running themselves ragged for the wrong clients. It might be exactly what they need to hear.