The Great EOY Purge: It's time to dump some of your clients

Is that paycheck really worth the emotional cost?

Hello friends! 2025 is rapidly coming to a close (literally how, wasn’t it March last month?), so now is as good a time as any to reevaluate your client list. Let’s call it the Great EOY Purge.

Dropping clients?! In this economy?!?!

Just hear me out.

As freelancers, we put so much time and effort — both emotionally and practically — into finding new clients. After all, that is our livelihood, and it’s a sometimes grueling task that never gets easier. And, before we get too far, yes, I fully concede this does sound kind of insane: Why would we dump a paying client after spending hours, weeks, or even months landing them? But the calculus gets a little more complicated when we take a step back to think about what we’re sacrificing to get that paycheck. Sometimes it’s really just not worth it.

It can even be freeing to let go.

I was inspired to write this newsletter after I saw someone on LinkedIn a while back say, more or less, that a paycheck is a paycheck, and everything is so precarious that sometimes you just have to eat the shit sandwich and put up with whatever it takes to get paid. I understand the intention behind the idea — again, it can seem ludicrous to drop a paying client — but I fundamentally disagree with it. No paycheck is worth sacrificing your mental well-being.

To wit: One of my first gigs after I went independent was a copywriting position. It paid exceptionally well: about $5 per word. Wild, I remember thinking. I had discovered the key to the freelance kingdom! Nothing but fat paychecks for easy work from here on out! I’ve made it!

But I hated the work. It wasn’t rewarding, it was dull, I wasn’t proud of it, and it just wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. The people I was working with were wonderful, which made the decision that much more complicated, but I needed to make a decision nonetheless. It took some deep introspection — Come on snowflake, are you really gonna give up a $5/word gig because it’s not ~rewarding~ enough for you? — and ultimately I concluded that the psychic toll it was taking on me wasn’t worth those lovely paychecks.

How do I know when it’s time to cut ties?