We Didn't Get The Client But We Learned The Lesson

We didn't get the client.

I, Natty, want to start there, plainly, because I think there's a version of this post where I bury that sentence under a bunch of positivity before I've actually let it be true. So: we didn't get the client. It didn't work out. That's the fact of it. It's hard for me as one of the co-founders, a leader, a positive business partner, to sometimes sit in these hard moments.

Here's the part nobody talks about enough — the buildup before a deal falls through.

I told myself not to get hyped. I said it out loud, actually, more than once: don't count this before it's signed. But somewhere in the middle of the calls and the proposals and the good energy in the room, I stopped listening to my own advice. It felt close. A deal was on the table. A line had been drawn. We were fully in "win it to win it" mode — the kind of momentum that feels less like hope and more like certainty.

That's the trap. Certainty is seductive right up until it isn't true.

When the answer came back as no, I didn't jump straight to a pep talk. I sat with it. For a minute, I just let myself be upset, genuinely, unguarded upset, not the performative kind you talk yourself out of in five seconds so you can post about resilience later.

I think that minute matters. Let me be honest, I was upset for a good hour. Skipping it doesn't make you tougher. It just means the feeling shows up later, sideways, when you're not paying attention to it.

Then I got up. Made myself get out of the house, call Alicia to brainstorm, put some fu*cking lipstick on. I forced a break between the feeling and the next decision.

If it's not this client, it's the next one. And the next one is out there, probably closer than it feels right now, on a day like this.

Not getting a client isn't a verdict on the work, the team, or the pitch. Sometimes timing is wrong. Sometimes budgets shift. Sometimes it's a hundred things that have nothing to do with whether you deserved it.

So instead of chasing that story, I've been trying to hold two things at once:

• It's allowed to hurt. Losing a deal you wanted is a real loss. Feel it.

• It's not the whole story. One no doesn't cancel out the work, the pipeline, or the next opportunity.

  
  

  We take what we learned from this pitch, sharpen it, and bring it to the next one. The next client is real, and it's closer than it feels on the hard days.