There's already a thread for this, but it's a bit old so I'm hoping there are more stories to learn from out there.

I work in a very small franchise setting (5 people in our office, ~50 people worldwide) doing consulting work and I have direct, daily contact with our clients. I'm positive that at least among my coworkers & boss, there will be no issues. I'm maybe 90% sure that none of my clients will have a problem with my transition - but I genuinely don't know. It's a worry of mine that if clients start dropping our service after I come out, my job will be at risk because my salary is directly supported by the amount of money I bill per week.

I've been doing some freelance work on the side, but not nearly enough to replace my salary if I were to lose my job. My coworkers that know about my pending transition have been supportive and don't think we will have any problems with my clients, but obviously no one can say for sure.

Has anyone had a similar situation, and if so, how did you handle it?

My wife and I own a small computer software and computer consulting business. I came out to all my clients January 2013 and went full time in March 2013. 7 months later, we haven't lost a single client. With 2 clients we renewed a contract and have had no issues. Most customers don't really care because they care more about the quality of our work than what gender I am or we my wife an I are a straight or lesbian couple. Neither one of us changed our last names, but all of our customers knew we are married, but some vendors we dealt with didn't know and don't need to know.

I own a small professional service firm with small and large clients alike and am the rainmaker, I'm out socially but not professionally yet. I'm very interested in first hand accounts and will share mine as it unfolds.

Thank you Sydney! When you told your clients, what kind of medium did you use? I'm sure that my boss would want to send out a formal email message to everyone letting them know.

Quote from: ftmax on October 23, 2014, 08:51:48 AM
Thank you Syndey! When you told your clients, what kind of medium did you use? I'm sure that my boss would want to send out a formal email message to everyone letting them know.

For the small clients (4-5 employees, some family), I told the owner of the company in person (while present male) and they told their employees or they were there when I announced it. For the medium size companies (10-25 employees), I told the owner/president and the manager in person. (In one case the manager figured it out and just asked me one day if I was transitioning because she just had a feeling and I hadn't even started HRT when that happened.) They told their employees most of the time and I did do an E-MAIL for one of them. With our one large client (250+ employees in division and over 5k worldwide), I told the division president by phone. (They are in NC, we are in NJ.) He had no issues and I sent a E-MAIL to the whole division with his approval. Several employees become more personable on the phone. But I did have one or two that used to hear from and never really here anything directly from them. One of them moved to a different division and the other was always complaining or grumpy about something, so I wasn't worried about it. Unfortunately that division is being shutdown as it wasn't profitable enough for the corporation. (It's a big international corporation that is based in NC.)

I always started with the person making the decisions on projects basically. From there navigate the best way. Everyone gets my name right and once in a blue moon a pronoun is wrong, but it's very rare and when it happens they correct themselves.