Paid diagnosis: why I should've said no to the job

TL;DR

A client hired me for social. I got them reach. Then they fired me. And the thing is, I'd suspected from the first week that social wasn't going to solve their problem. But they knew their business, I was new, and they were paying me to do a job. So I did it. Ten months later, nobody was happy. When they came back wanting more social, I finally pushed back. We ended up doing search work, which strengthened my original concern about their website. The mistake wasn't that I gave them bad social. It was that I accepted the job without making the case for what I thought they actually needed. That's why I changed how I work. Now I get paid to figure out the problem before anybody starts spending money fixing it.

A client hired me for social. I got them the reach they wanted. Sales didn't budge. They fired me.

At the time, it felt unfair. They asked me to do something, I did it, and it worked.

Except it didn't.

Because they didn't really want reach. They wanted customers. Social was how they thought they'd get them.

And I'd had a pretty good idea from the first week that social wasn't going to solve their problem.

I just didn't know how to say no to the job.

Just because somebody wants to hire you to do something doesn't mean it's what they need.

Which sounds pretty obvious now. But when somebody comes to you with work, and you're good at that work, it's easy to say yes. You put together a proposal, agree on a price, and get started.

I did that for years.

What I hadn't figured out was how to stop and say, "Look, I can do that. But I don't think that's going to get you what you want."

And more importantly, how to make that case before anybody started spending money.

I said sure.

The client is a family-owned CBD company in California. Good products, loyal customers, a founder who really knows his stuff. I like these people, and I still work with them.

They'd built their website over seven years, one page at a time. You add something here, fix something there, and eventually you've got seven years of decisions living on the same website.

They hired me for social. I said sure, put together a small retainer, and got started.

A week in, I told them I thought the website was a bit of a mess. I didn't think it would convert, and I explained why.

They pushed back. Their customers knew how to use it. They just needed more customers.

And I thought, well, they know their business. I've been here a week. Who am I to tell them?

So I went and did the work.

Ten months of social posts, emails, promotions, articles. We got reach. But we weren't seeing much of it turn into customers.

My reports kept hinting at the problem. In July, I actually wrote that their landing pages "may be too abstract."

Then I planned next month's posts.

I mean, there it was. Right in the report. I was telling them something wasn't working, then turning around and making more of the stuff that depended on it working.

And then they fired me.

That stung. I liked them. I believed in the company. And frankly, I felt like I'd delivered.

Which I had.

But I'd accepted the job they wanted to give me instead of making the case for the work I thought they needed.

Not this time.

About six months later, they called. More budget. Wanted to do social again.

And this time I said no.

I mean, what had changed? We'd already done ten months of social. CBD isn't something you can just throw paid ads at. Why would another round of campaigns suddenly work?

They asked again.

And I said something I don't recommend saying to a client.

"I'd rather watch you burn your money. At least it'll save us both time."

Not especially diplomatic. I was frustrated, and I didn't want to do the same thing again and get fired for it again.

But they asked a good question.

Okay, what would you recommend?

Fix the website.

They weren't excited about that. It's e-commerce. It's complicated. It's going to cost a fortune. And I get it. Nobody wants to hear that the thing they've spent seven years building needs to be redone.

So we got into search work instead. At least we could improve visibility and learn something about what people were looking for.

And we did.

Between February and September 2026, Google went from showing their site about 14,000 times a month to 43,000. Clicks went from 188 to 241.

More than three times the visibility. Not much more traffic. Sales ticked up a little, but nothing that really moved the needle.

And when we looked at what somebody new actually saw on the website, the problems were right there.

Product names that made sense if you already knew the company. Conflicting information. Almost none of the advice that closes sales on the phone anywhere on the site.

We weren't talking about the same customer.

That's what I finally understood about our disagreement.

They were talking about the customers they had. I was talking about the customers they wanted.

Their existing customers knew the products. They knew what they were looking for.

The strangers we were trying to reach didn't know any of that.

Both perspectives made sense. But I'd never really made that distinction clear.

I'd had an instinct, they'd disagreed, and I'd taken the job anyway.

Then we'd spent a lot of time and money working around the disagreement instead of settling it.

And I agreed to all of it.

At what I charge now, those first ten months alone would be $50,000.

That's not what they actually paid me. But what they spent could have gone a long way toward a new website.

And I don't love saying that, because I like these people. Our relationship is much better now, and I'm glad.

But think about it. We spent all that time trying to get more people to a website I didn't believe was going to turn them into customers.

And I agreed to do it.

That's the part that bothers me.

I knew how to do the work. What I hadn't figured out was how to get paid for the thinking that should happen before the work.

Because walking into a meeting after a week and telling somebody their website is a mess isn't much of a diagnosis. It's an opinion. Maybe an informed one, but still an opinion.

Actually looking at the business, understanding what they're trying to accomplish, figuring out what's getting in the way, and making a case for what to do about it?

That's a different job.

And it should happen first.

The thinking comes first now.

These days, I start with a paid diagnosis. I call it an Outside Read.

You come to me wanting social, or a website, or ads, or whatever. Fine. Tell me what you're trying to accomplish.

I look at the business and figure out what I think is actually getting in the way.

Maybe you need exactly what you came asking for. Great.

Maybe you don't.

I get paid for the diagnosis, so I'm not trying to sell you anything.

I'm getting paid to tell you what I think. And you're free to agree, disagree, hire me, or work with somebody else.

That's fine.

You've seen how I think. We've both had a chance to figure out whether we should work together before committing to months of work.

It protects me. My time, my energy, and my ability to stand behind what I'm doing.

But it also protects your budget.

Because spending a little money figuring out what's wrong beats spending a lot of money fixing the wrong thing.

Maybe we were both right.

Here's the thing. I don't think this client was wrong to push back on me.

They knew their business better than I did. They still do.

But there's a difference between knowing your business and knowing how somebody who doesn't know your business experiences it.

And sometimes you need somebody outside it to show you what you're missing.

That's true for business owners. It's true for consultants, too. I've certainly been guilty of it.

I don't know if a paid diagnosis would have changed what happened. Maybe they would have listened. Maybe they would have told me to take a hike.

But at least we'd have had the conversation properly. I'd have had the time to make my case, and they'd have been able to decide what to do with it before committing to months of work.

Instead, I took the job. Did the work. Got the reach.

And got fired.

The expensive part wasn't that we disagreed in the first week.

It was the ten months of work that followed without settling it.