Most founders measure their business by the work they won. Royston G King says the more instructive record is the other one. Here he explains what he learned from declining engagements, and why he thinks the discipline arrives too late for most people.
Royston G King began working in digital marketing while studying business administration at the University of Southern California, running campaigns for local businesses before founding his own firm in 2018. He was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Monaco list and has advised more than 1,000 clients across over 100 industries in markets including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia.
He has been open that the ability to decline work arrived considerably later than the need for it.
“In the early years you take everything, and you should, because you do not yet know what you are good at,” said Royston G King. “The problem is that nobody tells you when that phase ends. There is no signal. You just carry on taking everything for about three years longer than you needed to.”
The cost, in his account, is not primarily financial. A poorly matched engagement consumes the same delivery capacity as a well-matched one while producing a worse result, a less enthusiastic client, and no referral. It also occupies the attention that would otherwise go into work the firm is genuinely suited to.
“The expensive part is not the engagement itself,” said Royston G King. “It is that while you are inside it you are not building anything. You are not getting better at your actual work, you are not producing a case anyone will want to hear about, and at the end of it you have a client who is politely unenthusiastic. That is the real bill.”
“Nobody tells you when that phase ends. There is no signal.” Royston G King
King has described a specific category he learned to recognise, which is the client whose stated problem is not the problem.
“Somebody arrives asking for one thing and within twenty minutes it is clear the actual issue is somewhere else entirely, usually internal,” said Royston G King. “You can take that work. Everyone does. But if the thing generating the problem keeps generating it, you are treating symptoms, and you both know it by month three.”
His response has been to say so at the outset, which he acknowledges is commercially awkward.
“Sometimes the right advice is that we should not start yet,” said Royston G King. “Fix the thing upstream and then we can talk. Nobody enjoys hearing it, and I have lost engagements over it. I would still rather say it than take the work and spend six months quietly lowering expectations.”
He has argued the same reasoning applies to clients who are simply a poor fit for how a firm works, independent of whether the work could be delivered.
“There are clients you could serve competently who will still be a bad relationship, because the way they want to operate is not the way you operate,” said Royston G King. “That is not a criticism of them. It is just information, and it usually shows up during the sales conversation if you are paying attention rather than closing.”
King has said the practice of declining also changed the character of his sales conversations in a way he did not anticipate. A firm, visibly prepared to walk away is heard differently by the person across the table.
“When it becomes obvious you are actually assessing whether this makes sense, rather than performing an assessment on the way to yes, people take the rest of what you say more seriously,” said Royston G King. “That was not why I started doing it. It turned out to be the main benefit.”
He is careful about how far he pushes the argument. A firm without sufficient demand cannot afford to be selective, and advice to decline work is easy to give from a position that already has enough of it.
“I would not tell somebody in their first two years to start turning things down,” said Royston G King. “That is advice from a comfortable seat, and it is not useful. What I would say is to keep a note of every engagement that went badly and why, because the pattern shows up faster than you expect, and the point of the note is that you will actually recognise the next one.”
King has consistently pointed to operating systems, rather than the Forbes recognition, as the part of his own story he considers substantial. Client selection, in his framing, belongs to the same category of unglamorous work that determines outcomes and is invisible from outside.
To learn more about Royston G. King and follow his latest work, visit his official website, connect with him on Instagram and LinkedIn, or watch his latest content on YouTube.
