You know the feeling. You open your inbox and see their name. Your chest tightens. Your breath stops. There’s a pit in your stomach before you even read the email.

And yet, you stay. You keep showing up to the meetings. You keep managing the scope creep. You keep telling yourself it’ll get better, or that you can’t afford to lose them, or that it’s not that bad.

But here’s what’s actually happening: you’re stuck in what I call “the loop” – a closed circuit of fear, dysregulation, and mounting resentment that gets worse with every interaction. And while you’re white-knuckling your way through it, you’re bleeding cash, team morale, and your own capacity to lead.

The longer you let a bad situation fester, the worse it gets. I speak from experience on both sides of thisas someone who has released bad fit clients and moved on from misaligned team members.

Today, I’m breaking down the four red flags that signal it’s time to release and why trusting what your body already knows is one of the bravest leadership moves you’ll ever make.

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What Are the Early Warning Signs of a Bad Fit Client?

Boundary-bending requests and misaligned expectations at the very beginning signal a mismatch that will only compound over time.

The first two red flags show up early—often before you’ve even signed a contract. If you can catch them here, you can save yourself months (or years) of frustration, scope creep, and emotional labor.

Red Flag #1: They’re Asking You to Bend Your Boundaries

This happens at the very beginning of the relationship, and it sounds like:

• “Can you add this to what you do, even though we didn’t discuss it?”
• “I know that’s not what you said, but could you just…?”
• “I need you to do it, Erin. I just need you to do it.”

If you don’t have absolute clarity on their expectations from the beginning, and absolute certainty that those expectations align with what you’re willing to do, you have two options:

Option 1: Release before you even begin. Pass them to someone who might be a better fit. You don’t owe anyone an elaborate explanation. “I don’t think I’m the right fit for what you need” is complete.

Option 2: Reset the expectation immediately. Have the boundary conversation now, not three months from now when you’re drowning in resentment.

Here’s an example from my own work: I often have people come to me wanting me to write all their copy—sales pages, emails, LinkedIn posts, everything. They want to meet once a month and have me “just do it.”

And I have to reset that expectation right out of the gate: That’s not how I work. You need a strategic partner who sees the bigger picture and holds your team accountable to execution—not someone who logs into your website and writes your copy for you.

If they can’t receive that boundary, that’s a release point. If I don’t have that conversation at the beginning, I will 100% be writing all their copy three months later, drowning in resentment, and asking myself how I got here.

For team members or contractors, the same principle applies. If someone says “I can do anything you want,” that’s a red flag. No boundaries means there’s emotional labor ahead for you—because you’ll have to figure out what they want to do and then back that into your process so they don’t have to make a decision.

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Red Flag #2: Scope Creep

Scope creep is what happens when you didn’t reset expectations at the beginning—or when the boundary you set slowly erodes over time.

It looks like:

• “Can you just add this one thing?”
• “I know we didn’t discuss this, but while you’re at it…”
• “This is technically outside the scope, but it’s small, right?”

And then suddenly you’re doing work you never agreed to do, for compensation you never negotiated, with resentment you can’t shake.

Here’s the hard truth: scope creep is a leadership failure. Not theirs. Yours.

If you don’t have the tools to recognize and manage scope creep with regulated communication—if you can’t find yourself in time and space enough to have the conversation—you’ll revert to the contract as a safety blanket. And using the contract as a weapon (“Well, what’s in the contract?”) is the worst way to be in relationship.

The moment you see scope creep, you call it out. No excuses. No waiting. “You want me to do that? We need to have a conversation about compensation and expectations.”

Because compensation and expectations are the same thing.

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How Do You Know When Your Body Is Telling You to Release a Client?

Physical reactions like chest tightness, stomach pits, or breath-holding when you see their name signal dysregulation that compounds over time.

The next two red flags are subtler—and they’re the ones most founders override because we’ve been trained to ignore body signals in favor of “pushing through.”

But here’s what most people don’t know: your body sends your brain 80% of its information. Only 20% of what your brain processes comes from your thoughts. If you’re not listening to your body, you’re leaving 80% of critical intelligence on the table.

Red Flag #3: Physical Signals of Dysregulation

If every time you’re in a meeting with a certain client, you feel:

• A pit in your stomach
• Your chest tightening
• Yourself becoming fidgety or distracted
• A moment where there’s no breath running in or out of your body when you see their name in your inbox

That is not your fault. That is your body giving you permission to do one of two things:

1. Release the client without rationale
2. Have an honest conversation

Both of those options will bring up the next red flag: emotions.

Red Flag #4: The Emotional Loop
Your brain will immediately flood you with fear when you consider releasing a client:

“That’s money. We’re giving up money. We’re giving up reputation. We’re giving up safety and security.”

And when fear floods your body, your body reads that as threat and compounds the physical reaction. So the next time you show up with that client, you’re ever-so-slightly more dysregulated. And over time, your reaction to their 18th email is more pronounced than your reaction to their second email.

I call this the Princess and the Pea Syndrome. You slowly become more and more dysregulated because you’ve put yourself in a closed loop: Fear → Danger → Fear → Danger.

And it’s not the client creating that. It’s your fear of actually listening to your body and taking a step to remove yourself from that loop.

When you see this loop happening with your team, it’s your job as the leader to help them re-stabilize and find safety. Why? Because then they show up better for your other clients who do treat them well.

And let’s be honest: 99% of the time, the loop is caused because the client is out of bounds, there’s been scope creep, or they’re just not good people. Sometimes you won’t know until you know. And once you know—don’t get stuck in an asshole loop.

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Why Is Releasing Clients So Hard—and What Happens When You Don’t?

Releasing clients is hard because it triggers growth. But staying in bad relationships bleeds cash, morale, and your capacity to lead.

Here’s the thing no one tells you: it will always be hard to release a client. It will never not be hard, because that’s where the growth happens—in that moment you make the decision.

Think of it like leveling up at the gym. It’s easier to do 15 chest presses with 30-pound weights than 10 with 40-pound weights. But if you do the 10 with forties, you’re progressing.

The release mechanism is easy to understand and hard to learn to do. So give yourself compassion. In my own experience, I went through such a period of release in November and December that my physical body needed to catch up. I spent the holiday break completely flat—reading books, building Lego with my kids, recovering.

But here’s what I know now: every time I’ve released a bad fit client or team member, there has been more safety on the other side than there was in staying in the tense situation.

The longer you let it fester, the worse it gets. You bleed cash. You bleed morale. You bleed energy. And as the leader, there’s unspoken emotional labor in holding onto something that’s causing massive friction.

So here’s your self-diagnostic:

Open your inbox right now. Do you have a physical reaction to someone’s name? If you do, you might be in a loop.

Ask yourself: What is on the other side of this decision? Is it having a hard conversation, or is it simply making a decision to release?

The four red flags to look for are:

1. Boundary-bending from the very beginning
2. Scope creep
3. Physical signals of dysregulation
4. The emotional loop

These are all energetic. And once you learn to read your body signals, these decisions get easier—not because they stop being hard, but because you trust the wisdom of your body instead of overriding it with fear.