“Help! I lost my biggest client with no warning!”

The end of the school year! 

Greetings, T4T community! Well, here we are at the end of the “school year,” wrapping up with today’s content marketing class. I’m grateful to all 5,007 newsletter subscribers, and to the 1,254 (!!) of you who took T4T classes in the first half of the year. 

What’s on tap? First, a couple of self-paced classes in August, while I write the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. Then we’ll dive into a new school year in mid-September, and I’m also launching a T4T Plus tier (don’t worry, the free newsletter isn’t going anywhere!) for those who want some mentoring and targeted mini-courses. Whatever the second half of 2026 has in store, we’re in it together! 

But first, this week’s topic:

“Help! I lost my biggest client with no warning!” 

There are two kinds of freelancers:

• Those who have already lost a major client with no warning
• Those who will, at some point in the future, lose a major client with no warning 

Here’s how I was brutally introduced to this reality, back in about 2010

My big direct client at that time: a private university in France. They had international programs taught in English, into which they accepted students who spoke not a word of French. For that population, the school had to translate absolutely everything: how to register for classes, find a place to live, eat in the school cafeteria, get on the Wi-Fi. 

I loved their work, they paid well, and they were a high-volume client, with predictable peaks of work around the start of the new school year. 

Until I opened up my e-mail one morning, to this. “Hello Corinne! Thanks so much for all of your work for us over the years, we’ve really enjoyed the collaboration. Just wanted to let you know that we’ve hired a new communications specialist for our office. That person is bilingual in French and English and has also worked as a translator. She’ll be handling our translation needs from now on, but we’ll certainly keep you in mind if any additional needs arise.” 

And with that one e-mail, there went a significant percentage of my income, and a huge amount of my business confidence. 

Now what??

These days, lots of translators are getting a version of this e-mail, but the replacement is AI, not a bilingual communications specialist. LinkedIn is exploding with some version of this story: big client disappears overnight…now what? 

This led me to five observations:

1. When you have a dominant client, acknowledge the risks and benefits. Benefit: consistent work, less administrative overhead, getting to know their people and processes. Risk: A quarter, or half, or three quarters of your income disappears with one e-mail. A dominant client may be the right thing for you, but you need a business savings account that’s commensurate with the level of risk. Unscientific calculation: figure that it’s going to take you a month of marketing for every 10% of your income that this client represents, and round up. If they’re 25% of your income, figure that you need three months reserves in savings in case they dump you. 
2. After you get dumped, decide *right then,* before you start marketing to new clients, what percentage of your time/income you’re willing to give to one client in the future. Personally, I’m hesitant to give one client more than 25% of my time, or to have their work represent more than 25% of my income. But “no more work than you can afford to lose overnight” is a good guideline as well. 
3. Huge thanks to my past business coach Treasa Edmond for these next two; versions of which she wrote about it her most recent newsletter. Think about how clients are buying now, not how they bought in the past. The way you sold translation services even a year ago is really different from now, and really, really different than how you sold pre-ChatGPT. Because…
4. Treasa also pointed out that strategy and implementation are becoming way more important than pure execution, or what Ed Gandia calls “order-taking.” Lots of clients are (sadly) totally happy with a “good enough” translation that they got for free from ChatGPT. It’s harder to compare you to ChatGPT if you’re selling more than words. You have to emphasize the results and benefits of your work. In today’s content marketing class, guest instructor Lee Densmer suggested using wording like, “I help clients avoid costly and embarrassing mistakes when entering the German market.” “I make sure that your brand voice comes through in Japanese.” 
5. The hardest, and perhaps the most important: really, really try to embrace this as an opportunity to reinvent. Losing a big client can be a huge financial hit, and a huge blow to your confidence, and it also gives you a clean slate. You don’t have much to lose, so think about what you’d absolutely love to be doing. What kind of work would put you in a financial position where you’ve got six months to a year of savings, ready for the next time this happens? 

I hope these tips are helpful! Have a great week and I’ll be back in touch in a bit with some information about self-paced classes in August.