Last week a client paid an invoice and couldn’t resist a jab on the way out — something about me needing to relax and stop threatening over “piss money.”
Here’s what happened.
An out-of-state dealer hired Shades In Place for a few commercial measures and installs before. However, this time was different. Throughout the job he was engaged, checking in for updates, clearly invested. Then we sent the invoice, and he went silent. Three follow-ups, no response. Frustrated, I sent a text I shouldn’t have: pay by Friday, or I’ll seek legal action.
That brought him back quickly — along with a round of “did you set expectations with me?”, as though we’d never worked together and our terms weren’t already established.
He paid. I thanked him. And then I spent a few days thinking about what I’d actually do differently.
First: What Both of Us Got Wrong
Threatening court over $1,900 was a mistake on my end. However, not responding to my follow-ups was a mistake on his end. A simple acknowledgment would have put me at ease.
Second: Written Terms vs. Confirmed Terms
Our payment terms were printed on the invoice. Clearly: due on delivery, but it didn’t matter.
That’s the lesson I keep coming back to: written terms and confirmed terms are not the same thing. A term on paper protects you in a dispute. A term confirmed out loud prevents the dispute in the first place. I had the first and skipped the second, because we’d worked together before, and I assumed he knew the drill.
“He should already know” is precisely the gap that unreliable clients live in. And it’s widest with the familiar ones, because familiarity is where we get comfortable enough to stop confirming.
The fix takes ten seconds before the job starts: “Just to confirm — payment is due on completion, not net-30. Does that work with your accounting process?” That single question replaces two competing assumptions with one documented agreement.
Third: Never Underestimate Someone Else’s Money
The “$1,900 is piss money” comment is the one I’d push back on hardest. Maybe it is, to him. But that’s exactly why it shouldn’t be said out loud , because he has no way of knowing what that number means to the person on the other end of the invoice. To one company it’s a rounding error. To the installer who did the work, it could be a mortgage payment, a past-due bill, the margin between a good month and a hard one.
You don’t get to decide what someone else’s money is worth to them.
And that, more than anything, is why clear terms and timely collection matter. Not because every client is a problem, but because the day you’re depending on a payment is the day you can’t afford to leave it to someone else’s sense of urgency. Clear terms aren’t distrust. They’re how a smaller operator protects money that isn’t small to them.
To him, it was piss money. To the person who installed it, it may have been everything. Confirm your terms, collect on schedule, and treat every invoice like it matters — because to someone on the other end, it always does.
Roger Magalhães
Founder, Shades In Place & Trading Up Consulting
Host, No Strings Attached Podcast
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