Ep 28: Have you ever fired a customer?

In this episode, we reflect on Jerry Seinfeld's memorable commencement speech at Duke University. We delve into his three keys to life—bust your ass, pay attention, and fall in love—and discuss how these principles are essential for entrepreneurial success. We will also share a few stories about overcoming imposter syndrome, handling the pressures of starting a business, and even making the tough call to fire a customer to maintain the integrity of your venture.

We tackle the difficult subject of toxic clients and the strategies we’ve developed for handling unreasonable demands while prioritizing employee well-being. 

Episode Transcript

Ira (00:04):
Hello and welcome.
I am Ira Gordon and, along withStacee Santi, the host of the
Accidental Entrepreneurs podcast.
We each previously foundedsuccessful companies Along the
way.
We became business owners andeventually sold those businesses
despite us having no realbackground in business or ever
even planning to becomeentrepreneurs.
In other words, we did this alldespite originally having no

(00:25):
idea what we were doing orgetting ourselves into.
In each episode of this podcast, we will share stories and tips
from our journey and we'llanswer a randomly chosen
question about our experience.
Let's jump right into the show.

Stacee (00:41):
Good morning Ira.
How's it going?

Ira (00:43):
It's going well.
How have you been, Stacee?

Stacee (00:44):
Good morning, Ira.
How's it going?
It's going well.
How have you been, Stacee?
Been doing pretty good.
I was excited to talk to youthis week because I wanted to
ask you if you saw JerrySeinfeld's commencement speech
at Duke.

Ira (00:56):
Oh, my goodness, I heard a little bit about it.
I have not watched it, but yes,it is.
It is graduation season, Isuppose.

Stacee (01:03):
I know it is graduation season.
It's kind of funny, right.
Like I've been going to thesegraduation parties for friends
and family and like, oh, howexciting, you're 18.
Or you know, for me these arehigh school graduations and I
remember being 18 and thinkinglike how much I had it dialed in

(01:26):
, right, like I kind of kneweverything I needed to know.
I thought, and then when youlook at it from this perspective
in life, you realize likeyou're just getting started,
like it is just starting rightnow.

Ira (01:39):
High school is so stupid, like now you're getting going so
stupid, like now you're gettinggoing, yeah, and I remember I
guess it has name now but sortof firmly feeling like I had
imposter syndrome, like going toyou know a decent college, and
feeling like I had no idea whatI was doing and I'm a little bit

(02:00):
freaked out about all that.

Stacee (02:02):
Yeah, how could you know what you're supposed to be
doing right now?
So much pressure on everybody?
And you think like at 18,should I have known exactly what
I wanted to do in my life?
I think not.

Ira (02:13):
Yeah.

Stacee (02:14):
Well, let's play part of his commencement speech, and
then I want to hear what youhave to say about it.

Jerry Seinfeld (02:21):
I will give you my three real keys to life.
No jokes in this part.
Okay, they are.
Number one bust your ass.
Number two pay attention.
Number three fall in love.
Number one you obviouslyalready know.
Whatever you're doing I don'tcare if it's your job, your
hobby, a relationship, getting areservation at M Sushi Make an

(02:45):
effort, just pure stupid.
No real idea what I'm doinghere.
Effort, effort, always yields apositive value, even if the
outcome of the effort isabsolute failure of the desired
result.
This is a rule of life.
Just swing the bat and pray isnot a bad approach to a lot of

(03:07):
things.
Number two pay attention.
If you're in a smallsubmersible that looks like a
giant kazoo and going to visitthe Titanic seven miles down at
the bottom of the ocean and thecaptain of the vessel is using a
Game Boy controller, payattention to that.
What are you checking out downthere?

(03:30):
Oh, I see what happened.
This ship sank.
Now I understand why it nevermade it into port If the fish
where you are have eyes likeShelly Duval and a bendy straw
with a work light hanging offtheir head.
You do not belong there.
If the fish are going.

(03:51):
I can't see a goddamn thing youwon't either.
Number three fall in love.
It's easy to fall in love withpeople.
I suggest falling in love withanything and everything every
chance you get.
Fall in love with anything andeverything every chance you get.
Fall in love with your coffee,your sneakers, your blue zone
parking space.
I've had a lot of fun in lifefalling in love with stupid,

(04:15):
meaningless physical objects.
The object.
I love the most is the clearbarrel big pen $1.29 for a box
of 10.
I can fall in love with a carturn signal switch.
that has a nice feel to it Apizza crust that collapses with
just the right amount ofpressure.
I have truly spent my lifefocusing on the smallest things

(04:35):
imaginable, completely obliviousto all the big issues of living
.
Find something where you lovethe good parts and don't mind
the bad parts too much, thetorture you're comfortable with.
This is the golden path tovictory in life.
Work, exercise, relationships,they all have a solid component

(04:58):
of pure torture and they are all1000% worth it.

Ira (05:04):
Gotta love the, the bust your ass.
You know what could be betterthan giving something your all?
And I think that's that's greatadvice for anybody.
I think, when he talks aboutfalling in love with something,
I think, yeah, that's reallyabout having, about having

(05:26):
passion for things, and also, Ithink very important is really
like celebrating the good things, even when they seem like
they're small good things, andI've had to learn this from
people along the way, because Ihave instinctually been more
focused on sort of long-termchallenges and rewards and

(05:51):
trying to accomplish somethingthat's fairly far out, but in my
more advanced age, have reallytaken to excessive celebration
over small steps in the road tothat ultimate goal.

Stacee (06:22):
Well, let's hop over and talk about the question of the
week, which is have you everfired a customer?

Ira (06:31):
Oh boy, this is something that I'm sure anybody that's run
a business or been a leader ina business has had to consider
when they've been faced with aparticularly difficult customer
or client.
We really didn't have a lot ofbad examples of this in my

(06:53):
online test prep business, butwe did have a couple of people
that did bad things right and wehad to decide what to do, and
really the only thing we coulddo was cancel them and fire them
.
And so we had some people thatposted our content, you know,
online and various forums forpeople to access, which, of
course, is a violation of ourterms and conditions and the
threat to our business and allthose things.

(07:13):
So we had to do that.
We had somebody that I rememberand I just thought it was so
funny that they did this on onTwitter back when it was still
called Twitter.
But they like, oh, like I havelike a month left on my
subscription and I finished myexam Like who wants to buy the
last month of my you know accessto vet prep, which also, you
know, not aligned with our termsand conditions, not allowed to

(07:36):
be done, and then you know, wehad to fire them.
Yeah, they gave him a red card,you know, and of course they get
super mad.
They're.
You can't go.
I'm sorry you feel that way,but what are you thinking?
How about you?

Stacee (07:51):
You know, I have fired some people from Vet2Pet but I
can't really remember all thedetails.
But I definitely remember someof my more traumatic firings at
the veterinary practice, which Ithink is a much more escalated
environment.
You know, and maybe that'swhere I went to the school of

(08:12):
hard knocks to learn theimportance of firing a client, a
bad actor, and so maybe it'snot as traumatic and burned into
my brain as those at vet to petthan it was those earlier days.

Ira (08:25):
You know what I mean no, I definitely have had to fire a
few veterinary clients, andusually not because of anything
they did to me, but because ofthings that they did to people
that work for me.

Stacee (08:40):
Um yeah, that's the kicker is like these most, most
of these people will even in youknow any company, I think once
the head honcho comes into thescene, you get this whole other
person show up.
You know you're in thesituation where you have your
employee who's super upset aboutwhat they heard or said that

(09:02):
was done to them, and then thisperson that is like that didn't
happen this way.

Ira (09:10):
And and especially when that doesn't align with your
experience working with them,because they put on their nicest
face to talk to you the doctoror the owner or the leader and
but then you hear from otherpeople like this person was
really rude or this person, youknow, I had to fire a client
because he was inappropriate tomultiple female employees of
mine and ultimately, even aftera warning and being spoken to,

(09:33):
like it continued and it's likeI can't.
I can't let my people be, youknow, treated this way or made
to feel this way or put in thesepositions.
Like you know that's myresponsibility as as a business
owner to not have them be in anuncomfortable you know
environment for them.
And and it's tough because youknow that you know firing

(09:56):
somebody is going to make themdefensive upset, probably post
some nasty stuff about you andor your clinic on the internet
for everybody to see, and it itreally puts you in.
I mean, in some ways it's not atough position because you know
what the right thing to do is,but in other ways, you know
you're just inviting a bunch ofhardship for yourself.

Stacee (10:16):
Yeah, I think the fear of the backlash is what keeps a
lot of people from doing what Iwould say is the quote unquote
right thing to do, which is tored card the client.
And I remember when I was prettynew at my veterinary my second

(10:39):
veterinary job here in Durango Ihad a great boss there.
Here in Durango, I had a greatboss there.
He was really one of the firstbosses I had that was really
great at what he did.
I mean, he was stern, don't getme wrong, but he was really
really good at leading.
And he came in one day and Ithink he had realized there was

(10:59):
a big problem with the clientsthat had gotten away with things
and we had created this cultureof prioritizing the client, no
matter what, over the staff,which happens in a lot of
businesses.
And during a staff meeting heasked us all to write down the
top three clients that gave usan ulcer when they walked in the

(11:23):
door and he took them all andthe ones that had repeat showed
up on multiple people's list.
He canned them and it wasreally bold.
I mean, it was really bold,especially like if they hadn't
been in recently and they hadn'tdone anything recently.

(11:43):
And I think he just approachedit honestly and said, hey,
listen, I asked my staff this.
Your name came up, you're outand like I'm giving you a fair
warning so you can find aprovider before you need it.
And I think, god, what if everybusiness did that?

Ira (12:00):
It's really, I think, a change in the way businesses
think about their workforce asbeing their most important asset
, even more so than theirclients or customers.
You know, I grew up workingbefore I was a business leader.
I was just a lowly entry-levelemployee like the rest of us,
and in most of those jobs therewas very much the mindset that,

(12:23):
like, the customer is alwaysright and even our, you know,
rudest and most entitledcustomers like we would try our
best to sort of bend overbackward for us from the you
know, take the heat and, just,you know, be super, duper polite
and try to basically just doeverything that we could to make

(12:43):
a rude, unhappy client a littlebit happier.
And I think that the result ofthat is that employees like they
just feel like they're notvalued, right, like you know,
like, yeah, you just got to putup with this because this is our
customer and our customer isour top priority, not you Right.

(13:03):
And and I think that goodbusiness leaders have come to
the realization that that'sactually the opposite of what's
true, right, like, what isreally most important to this
business is having productive,happy and valued employees that
feel that value and feel thatsupport from their leaders.

(13:24):
They're going to do their bestwork and that's going to lead to
you putting out the the bestproduct, and that's actually
going to lead to having the mostand happiest customers too.
And sometimes that meansidentifying.
You know what this customer isjust not worth it, or it's not
really the customer that we want.

Stacee (13:38):
Of course there are no-go zones, right, immediate
red card situations.
Sure, it should be right.
Someone talks inappropriatelyto a staff member, like one time
this guy at our veteran clinicasked our receptionist if she
would scan, you know, themicrochip scanner.
He had just had prostatesurgery and he was fairly sure

(14:01):
someone had inserted a trackerin his surgical site and he
wanted our employee to use themicrochip scanner to scan him
for this chip.
And you know they call me.
Hopefully you have a culturewhere the employee feels
empowered to call in the bossand hopefully you have a culture

(14:22):
where the boss will handle itand not just brush it off.
But you have to go in and say,like you're, what are you doing?
Like this is not appropriate atall.
And then you have to decide ifthey're mental and they just
needed a little, you know, get agrip, shoulder shake or if
they're more, this is how theytruly think and behave and

(14:47):
they're toxic.
You have to make a decisionthere.
But I feel like outside of theweird wacko ones, when it's in
the gray zone, is the hardestand I always try to ask myself
is this client worth it?
And I hate, you know, reallyyou're saying my employee versus

(15:08):
my client.
But let's be honest, that iswhat's happening and sometimes
you have maybe an employee thathas problems with lots of
clients, so you sort of can seethe trend there.
Or for me at Vet to Pet, like Ihad the nicest, most amazing

(15:30):
customer service person she was.
I can't even think of a nicerperson I've ever met in my
entire life.
And so when she would come intomy office with a client that
had she was having issue with,with tears in her eyes, I sat up
right.
I'm like what is going on?
Because we're just havingsoftware here, like no one

(15:53):
should be crying, and then I'mgoing to take the side of the
employee, like always.
But I had to learn that thehard way.
I'm not saying I got there likeso easily.

Ira (16:05):
I had to learn like what are the challenges or the risks
of keeping a toxic client aroundyeah, I had a client that told
me that, um, that he wasdiagnosed with, you know, some
type of massive depression orsomething like that and that he,
um was planning to kill himselfwhen his cat died.
Because I was kind of like theonly reason he was hadn't done

(16:28):
it yet um was he had to takecare of his cat and um, and that
, like you know, he's, he's likethought about it and, like you
know, he's very sort of likevery rational, although kind of,
you know, dark and weird aboutit.
Um and uh, that's kind of likeoh shit, like what, like what am
I supposed to do here?
Like this, this guy's cat isgonna die um soon and um, and

(16:49):
you try to like encourage him toget help, just like you know
what else you can do, but, um,you know we do see some crazy
shit what are some of thedownsides do you think on the
business for keeping regulartoxic people around, not like
psychopath toxic people, butregular toxic people around?

Stacee (17:13):
Well, first off, let me ask you what are some of the
symptoms of a regular toxicclient?

Ira (17:20):
So somebody that's there.
They're seemingly never happy,right, they always have
something to complain about.
Um, they tend to be rude to, asusually employees, sometimes to
you too, but usually it's thethe people that work there that
they don't, uh, for whateverreason, treat with the respect

(17:42):
they deserve.
And, um, yeah, and or they,they just they make people
uncomfortable, they dreadtalking to them.
You know all those things howabout you?

Stacee (17:58):
what do you think?
Well, I think that that's agreat list.
And also there are some peoplethat feel that if they talk
louder, if they're more bullish,that you'll somehow bring the
secret answer out from the backroom and give it to them.
Right, like they're never happyand they think if they pull

(18:18):
forward on it I don't know ifthat's the right word, but they
push harder, either withescalated voice or language or
just behavior, they'll get whatthey want.
And our culture rewards peoplelike this, right Like the
squeaky wheel gets the oil, likethat is the culture in our

(18:39):
society.
So they're sort of trained Likeif I can be more of an asshole,
I'll get what I want and theyget rewarded for it.
But to me that's a big red flagwell.

Ira (18:50):
I'll get what I want and they get rewarded for it.
But to me that's a big red flag.
I think another thing is whenthere's like a mismatch between
the volume of the complaint andthe severity of the insult,
right, like if you have anextraordinarily upset client
because I don't know, forexample, they brought in what
they thought was a healthyanimal, that you know something

(19:11):
terrible happened, and say theanimal died while in your
veterinary clinic, it was like,yeah, the fact that they're
extraordinarily angry and upsetis appropriate relative to the
magnitude of the insult thathappened.
It doesn't mean they're a toxicclient.
It means that they're reallyupset because something really
bad happened and they may needtime to process.

(19:32):
You know they may needadditional explanation and they
may still be upset, but it's notkind of inappropriate.
But when somebody is yelling andscreaming and what have you
because of, you know amedication wasn't ready and they
had to wait 10 minutes orsomething like that, and yet
that's kind of like, yeah, likeI get that's, that's upsetting

(19:54):
too.
But there's sort of like arelative magnitude of response
compared to the you know, theprecipitating insult, that that
should be in alignment.
And if somebody is freaking outthat much about a relatively
mild insult, like just imaginehow they're going to be when
there's a moderate one or amajor one, because those things
do happen too.

Stacee (20:15):
They definitely do, and I think part of what goes wrong,
at least for me at Vet2Pet wasand I've seen it in other
companies, so I think it'suniversal, probably to some
degree is the sales team issuper motivated to sign up
people, right Like that's theirjob and they get paid on it, and

(20:40):
so they sign up lots and lotsof people, as many people as
they can sign up.
But sometimes they sign up thewrong people where once you get
them into the funnel, into theecosystem, you realize they have
totally different needs thatyour product can't meet, your
product or service can't satisfy.
It takes a while, usually forthe account manager to figure

(21:11):
out like, oh my God, like yougot sold something that we can't
really do or we can't do it theway you want it done.
And now I have to be the bearerof bad news to you and you've
already signed up and investedthis time.
So I find that in thissituation it's super hard
because they're both.
They have enough invested thatthey're trying to push forward,

(21:32):
but the thing won't do what theywished and hoped it would do
and it's probably, if we'rebeing honest, not going to do
that thing for a long time orpossibly ever.
So you have to just kind ofsomeone has to hold up the flag
and be like whoa, whoa, whoa,pump the brakes.
This is a mismatch.

Ira (21:52):
How do you fix that?
I definitely dealt with thisand I think it's particularly
hard at a startup Sometimes it'srelatively new business when
the sales team they want to beable to say yes, and so yeah, I
think why can't we do that Right?
And and it can put that youknow, product delivery or

(22:15):
account manager team in a reallydifficult spot of then having a
new customer that's beenpromised things that you're just
not set up to to really givethem and you hate to, you know,
hate to discourage a motivatedsales team.
Like, yeah, it's a really toughproblem.
What do you think?

Stacee (22:36):
I think that, at least for me.
My experience is that in manycompanies the sales team is
super siloed away from thecustomer success team, and
that's what happened at mycompany, and so when I saw the
sales people would make the saleand then I could see the
customer success people bepissed Like you just handed me

(23:01):
the worst situation ever.
Our product can't do this andit won't do that.
And you didn't interrogate thecustomer enough before you
signed them up.
And this was all this backchannel crap going on.
So I put them together.
I'm like sales and success willdo.
Not only will they do aone-to-one handoff, but we

(23:24):
started setting up.
There were certain milestones.
We tried to identify threemilestones a customer needed to
achieve to be happy, and then,when those were achieved, to
have the success team reportback to the sales associate like
we did it, you did it, I did it.
Great, and I think once thosepeople can see what winning

(23:47):
looks like, maybe there's achance they'll be a little more
accountable for the kind ofclients to bring it in the door.
I don't know.
Sometimes too, I think thesales team needs to have the I
don't want to make them out tobe the bad guy?
Because they're not.
They don't have the deepintellect of what the product
can and can't do sometimes.

(24:08):
So they need to be empoweredand hopefully encouraged to
bring the customer successmember on to a call pre-sale to
like, if it's a little weird,like hey, can you come and just
listen to what they want to dobefore we sign them up and make
sure I'm reading it right?
Yeah.

Ira (24:30):
Yeah, I think that's good advice.
For sure, I think sometimes thepeople that are most motivated
to buy a new product after theyget a pitch are the ones that
are.
They're kind of like the mostdesperate for something to come
in and solve a lot of theirproblems.
And sometimes you know aproduct can't solve everybody's
all of your problems, right, itcan solve a specific problem.

Stacee (24:52):
In most cases problems right, it can solve a specific
problem in most cases.
Yeah, we had a practice thatsigned up for Vet2Pet that had
lost their main texting provider.
They got bought by Twilio andthen they were getting their
texting service sunsetted.
So they definitely needed analternative.
And this particular practicewas like a super user of texting

(25:13):
.
Before it was even cool to dothis and we had texting, but it
was pretty early stage.
But, yes, we had texting, yes,you can text your clients.
So I can see definitely how thesalesperson made the sale.
But then, when we got the clientin, they needed a lot more of

(25:35):
bells and whistles on the futurethat we were working on and
would have in the future.
How long in the future, I don'tknow.
But this client starts applyingso much pressure to us that
it's starting to affect thedevelopment roadmap and I think
that's where it gets dicey thatyou're building out systems that

(25:58):
one day will be helpful for alot of people, but at the moment
it's going to really be helpinga small subset of people.
That's not good, not good atall.
I had to cut the client looseand just say, listen, we can't
do what you want, we can't rightnow, so come back in a year or
two.
But setting the expectation isgoing to just take so much

(26:22):
pressure off you as the teamlead, or the founder, or

(26:52):
whoever's you've foundbeneficial along the way.
This week I am going to shareone of my favorite quotes from
my mentor, my first boss, thathe wasn't my first boss, he was,
he's my first really good bossand he ran the clinic.
I worked at the animal hospitaland he had the saying that just

(27:15):
do what's right for the animaland everything else will work
out.
And it seems simple enough, itseems like obvious, right, but
it's actually a super hard thingto do in many situations to
just do what's right for theanimal.
But the reason I love it isbecause it gave you a priority,

(27:35):
a triage.
Like you knew who the keystakeholder was all the time.
And sometimes it was hard, likeif the animal bit somebody and
the client is there and you'renot sure what you should do.
Like what is best for theanimal?
Is it going to be to put it tosleep?

(27:57):
Is it going to be to rehome it?
What's it like going to be?
What's its life going to belike if you rehome it, if you
know it's going to probably biteagain?
Is it just going to live in acage its whole life?
Like, maybe the best thing isto put the animal to sleep?
Maybe the client doesn't wantyou to put the animal to sleep
and you have to.
So it's not.

(28:17):
It sounds very simple, but it isactually not very simple.
And the reason I love thatquote is when I started Vet2Pet,
I had to figure out who the keystakeholder was, the top dog,
and it was the veterinarian,right, the customer.
And this gave us kind of aNorth Star, if you will Like,

(28:40):
when we got into challengingsituations.
Well, what is the right thingto do for the veterinarian?
Because that is why we're here,and it kind of made it a little
easier to make difficultdecisions.

Ira (28:57):
It's great, that's awesome.
So I sort of alluded to thisperson earlier.
I'll mention him again.
But my old, oh, you should tellme who that person was.

Stacee (29:05):
Your first mentor Give us a name Dr Dan Parkinson.

Ira (29:09):
Excellent.
Well, thank you, Dr Dan.
So my you know, reallyinfluential mentor and business
partner, Chan Khanna influentialfor a bunch of reasons, but I
would put towards the top ofthat list the fact that he is an
impossible optimist, right, youknow, just believes in, you

(29:30):
know, impossibility and that,you know, things can always be
better.
And I love that.
And I think, going along withthat, I remember having a
conversation about, you know,something we were thinking about
doing for the business.
I was like, oh man, that's goingto be really hard, right.
And he just said to me he said,ira, everything is hard and

(29:57):
some things are just worth it,and so that sort of just
reframed the thing.
It's not about how hard thisthing is to do, it's whether
it's actually worth it.
And I thought that was a reallyhelpful kind of way to reframe
the way, you know, I would thinkabout various things and and I

(30:21):
almost have kind of like this, Iimagine, like this little
matrix that you think about well, this is how much work or how
hard this thing is going to be,and this is going to be the
impact or benefit.
And you know, you don't want topick the things that are at the
edge of that curve wherethey're extraordinarily
difficult, time-consuming andthe like, but the impact they're

(30:41):
going to make is very, verysmall.
You'd rather prioritize thingsthat are the other way and
things that are really hard butare going to have a big impact.
Who cares if they're hard,they're worth it.

Stacee (30:51):
I love that, and in my consulting company I'm finding
that hardly anybody spends anytime thinking about what success
looks like.
You know what is the.
If everything goes great, whatdo I get at the end of the
rainbow?
Is it a bunch of money?
If so, how much Is it like helpso many people?

(31:15):
If so, how many?
Like nobody thinks about whatthe the end game is, which makes
it to your point like how harddo you want to work?
How much effort are you goingto put in?
Because?
Is it even worth it?

Ira (31:34):
Yeah, what does success look like?
It can be a little bitoverwhelming to sort of combine
both thinking long-term whenthere's so much short-term
uncertainty as well as thevariety of different sort of
stakeholders that are pulling onyou in terms of what success
looks like.

Stacee (31:51):
Well, let's spin the wheel.

Ira (31:53):
Well, actually, we only have one question left, because
it's oh, my goodness, we arereaching the end of the road.

Stacee (32:02):
The final question of the season is what were some of
your most creative or successfulcustomer engagement ideas?

Ira (32:13):
Well, yes, that definitely should be a good opportunity for
us to share some experiencesthat maybe involve a little bit
of outside the box thinking.
So I'm sure I'll probably besharing other people's ideas
when we get to mine.

Stacee (32:29):
All right.
Well, I look forward to seeingyou next week, Ira.

Ira (32:32):
All right, thanks, stacey, take care.
I look forward to seeing younext week, ira.
All right, thanks, Stacee, takecare.