In 48 hours, I had four emails from the same person. And as I read through them, the tone got more and more frustrated.

It all started a few days before.

I’m the president of a nonprofit. And we were having an issue with an independent contractor. So I’d been emailing back and forth with a Board Member about how to deal with it.

The day before I left for a two-day writing retreat, I chimed in on how I thought it should be handled.

I checked my email right before I left and didn’t see a response, so I assumed he agreed with my approach.

And then I went off to my retreat and didn’t check email for two days.

When I came back I saw his responses.

My initial reaction was irritation.

I thought…

I left on a Friday at noon and now it’s Sunday at 3 pm. Seriously, it’s a weekend buddy, calm the f down.

Luckily, rather than shooting off a snotty response, I went for a walk.

And while I was out walking, I realized that his irritation was my own fault.

You see when it comes to working with my clients, I tell them how I process my email inbox.

They know that I:

• don’t promise a response in less than one business day
• only respond to emails twice a day (about noon and five)
• start at the bottom of my inbox and work my way up (which means the more emails they send, the longer it’ll take me to respond)

Sure I’d outlined this process to the Board when I first became President. But that was four months ago and I’d never stuck to these rules.

I’d been responding to emails:

• throughout the day, in the evenings, and on the weekends
• randomly based on what seemed most urgent, rather than going bottom to top

And because I didn’t follow my rules, his expectation was that I would quickly chime in and respond. Which meant that I was the problem, not him.

Does this sound familiar?

• Your clients text at 2 AM and expect a response.
• Your clients email on the weekends and are upset when they don’t get a response until Monday afternoon.
• Your clients demand that you do another round of edits when it wasn’t in your scope.
• Your clients send you a barrage of questions in multiple emails a day.
• You’ve got that one client that’s a huge time suck and you wish you could fire, but can’t afford to.
• Your clients have unreasonable expectations about how quickly you can do the work.

If you’ve got annoying, demanding, or selfish clients then I encourage you to look within. To conduct a little self-evaluation and discover if you are the problem. (Like I was…)

And if so, you should think about what:

• boundaries you need to set
• expectations you need to shatter
• systems you need to create

And then test out one of these things. And then another.

And keep repeating this process until you get to the point that you have clients:

• you’d call friends
• you want to grab coffee, tea, or beer with
• that trust you to do your job
• that understand what you’ll do
• that understand what you need from them

Because that’s the only way to change these patterns.

What’s one small tweak you can make that would impact your relationship with your clients? Share your insights in the comments below.