Is it worth bringing clients into your project management software? What potential pitfalls should you be aware of, and how can you navigate them to enhance client relationships and improve operational efficiency? In this interview, Logan Lyles at Teamwork.com and Susan Fennema at Beyond the Chaos dive into the pros and cons of making client communications transparent through platforms like teamwork.com. Here are the key insights they discuss:
- Transparency and Client Involvement: Inviting clients into the system can provide transparency and improve efficiency. Clients can see the progress and understand the workflow, which helps preemptively address their concerns and reduces the need for extensive meetings.
- Risk Management: While the idea of transparency is beneficial, it comes with risks, such as exposing internal communications and deadlines to clients. Susan discusses the importance of managing these risks by controlling what clients can see and understanding the different comfort levels among clients.
- Efficiency in Communication: Utilizing a centralized system like teamwork.com can improve communication efficiency by capturing all client interactions within the project management tool. This ensures a continuity of information, especially if a team member becomes unavailable unexpectedly.
- Perception Management: The visibility offered by such systems can sometimes lead clients to misunderstand the complexity of the work or the time required for quality control and other internal processes. It’s crucial to manage their perceptions by clearly communicating the processes and the reasons behind them.
- Client-Service Provider Relationship: Susan emphasizes maintaining a strong relationship with clients by educating them about the process, setting the right expectations, and proactively addressing any concerns. This approach helps turn potential risks into opportunities for better collaboration.
- Tailored Client Experience: Agencies should adapt their communication and project management approaches based on individual client preferences and needs, potentially integrating tools like Slack for seamless interaction.
- Training and Team Management: Investing in team training and maintaining open and effective communication within the team are essential for delivering high-quality service and managing client relationships effectively.
These insights can help small business owners understand the benefits and challenges of integrating clients into their project management systems and provide strategies for enhancing client relationships while safeguarding internal processes.
Please find the full transcript below…
Introduction to Client Communication Software in Agencies
Logan Lyles:
“We can’t let them see exactly how the sausage is made.” That’s the response today’s guest has often heard when she talks to agencies about inviting their clients into the software where they’re executing the work. Frankly, I heard that exact same pushback when I was running a client experience team myself. While there are many benefits to streamlining your client communications and inviting them into the system that runs your agency, benefits like visibility, client perception and efficiency, each one of those benefits comes with some pretty intimidating risks. What if internal communication accidentally goes to a client? What if we give them too much visibility?
In today’s conversation with Susan Fennema, CEO at Beyond the Chaos, an operations consulting firm that helps service-based businesses bring order to the, well chaos, she answers those questions and also shares the three primary risks to client communications within the software where you’re managing the work, how to mitigate those risks with a few key communication strategies and tactical tips for making your team more efficient without making it harder on your clients.
To kick things off, I asked Susan about a time her client gave the craziest response I’ve ever heard when she advised him on inviting his clients into their system.
Susan Fennema:
It’s a little terrifying, actually. We had a client who did not want their clients in teamwork with them because as the owner said, “I can’t yell at my people in teamwork to do their task if the client’s in there with them.” I was like, “Okay, we might have some other problems to address here, but there are also still ways around that”, but I found that to be one of the most interesting reasons to not use that client feature.
Logan:
So we’re going to be talking about some of the opportunities to working with your clients as you are delivering the work, which is a key component of the client work life cycle within any agency, and we’re going to be talking about some of the opportunities as well as some of the risks and how to mitigate them. But if your opposition or your potential risk is, “My clients will see me yelling at my employees”, then you might need to just take a quick time out, listen to one of our previous episodes on culture and team building or leadership, and then come back to this one if you’re in the case of Susan’s client there. So that is definitely an interesting one to open it up.
Before we get into some of the risks, which we want to call out and we want to enable listeners today, Susan, to be able to mitigate some of those risks and navigate them when they are inviting their clients into the software where they’re delivering the client work. Let’s first talk about some of the opportunities. To me they kind of bucket into three categories, visibility, perception, and efficiency. Talk to me about the first one, really the upside of visibility, and as you and I have talked about before, we’ll get to some of the risks there as well, but let’s talk about one side of the coin first.
The Benefits of Transparent Client Communication Software
Susan:
One of the huge benefits of having your clients in there working with you is them being able to see the progress you’re making, them being able to see what’s next in the steps. What do the milestones look like? Where are we against budget? A lot of times it will answer questions that you don’t have to spend a whole meeting having, and so that’s a big benefit to just allow them if they want it, to allow them that insight into the progress.
Logan:
Absolutely, and that insight leads us to number two, the perception, right? It gives your clients some peace of mind that you’ve got your ducks in a row, right? I mean, how would you expand on that, Susan?
Susan:
Well, one, it’s going to show that you’re organized and structured in the way that you’re doing their work. That’s first, and then the second is also that work is being done. Sometimes clients sit there and they’re like, “It’s been three weeks. Nothing’s happening”, but all these things are happening in the background. And so if they can see that, it makes them feel a little bit more comfortable that progress is being made on their work.
Logan:
That was something we talked about in the last episode with Erik Huberman from Hawke Media, how often that they see clients churn and they have this sentiment of, “Well, not much was going on.” Well, they weren’t necessarily seeing what was going on, they weren’t hearing. We talked a lot about responsiveness and response rates that they had analyzed with AI tools. So that one is a good one to check out to go back if you missed last week, but I think that reiterates the point that you’re making here that as I learned in journalism school, oftentimes perception is reality, and I think that holds true in a client service business because everything you do doesn’t deliver a product, doesn’t deliver something that’s in hand.
There are deliverables, there are things that you are providing at the end of the day, even in the service business, but there’s a lot of work that goes in that there isn’t necessarily a tangible outcome to every step in the process. So I think that you’re right to call that out.
And then I think the third piece, the opportunity for bringing your clients into the place where you are doing the work and managing the work is really just efficiency. I think that kind of goes without saying, but talk to us a little bit here about maybe some of the benefits you guys have seen as both a user of teamwork.com in your own company, Susan, as well as some of the clients that you’ve helped bring onto the platform.
Susan:
There are a couple of things in the area of efficiency that I think are so important to have clients in with you. In one case, it’s emails. How else are you communicating with your client? Probably via email. That’s a lot of information that’s going back and forth that’s not getting captured on the correct task or the correct project even. There’s no history of that communication as part of your single source of truth. That’s one part of that.
The second part is you lose a team member if they win the lottery or they just move on to a different project. All that communication is in their email box. How does someone come behind them, come up to speed quickly and understand where they are as far as not having to ask the same questions again and that kind of thing? The alternative to that, of course, is copying, pasting everything into the tool, which is very tedious, not efficient at all, and things are going to get missed. So having that way to capture that communication to me is priceless. One of the best examples of that is we just had a team member end up in the hospital. We couldn’t communicate with her. She was actually on oxygen in the hospital. We couldn’t communicate with her at all. She’s okay.
Logan:
But just so everybody knows for those, just listening, my face was like, “Okay, Susan, what’s going on with your team that I didn’t hear about?”
Susan:
She’s okay.
Logan:
Everything’s okay. We’ll keep going with the story here.
Susan:
But it was about two weeks and having that information to be able to go back to was priceless. If we didn’t have that to be able to help our client in her absence, everything could have fallen apart.
Logan:
And that’s an extreme example. I think that that calls it out in a very human way, and I appreciate you sharing that and being candid about something your team’s even gone through recently. I’ve seen it maybe a little bit less drastic example, but being part of an agency where we were going through a time of higher than historical employee turnover, and that can very, very easily correlate directly to client turnover. That employee turnover can equal client churn if you’re not careful. But if you have not only your team working in a systematic way, but you have clients that have visibility and the communication between those team members and the clients all managed in one spot, you can kind of pick up where you left off without as much disruption to the client.
The last thing I’ll add there too is I’ve seen it in working with clients. Hey, they have to-dos. Oftentimes in a service-based business, there are things you need to hold them accountable to do. And if you are doing that not via email or text or Slack or any of these other things, you are doing it again where the work is happening in your project management software, then it’s a little bit easier to hold those clients accountable.
Susan:
Absolutely. Being able for them to just reply to a quick email and attach the file that you’ve been asking for, and now it’s in the right place. That’s incredible. And Logan, we missed one big thing. A lot of clients, a lot of agencies these days are using contractors or 1099s to do a certain aspect of the job, and if you’re not capturing their information, their communications, when they have to make that ask for something or make that communication with a client, that could really be lost forever because it’s maybe not even in your email domain. So that could be a big thing.
Identifying Risks in Client Communication Software
Logan:
That’s a really good call out. I’m glad that you paused on that one for sure, Susan. And I just want to for you listening here at teamwork.com, that we believe in the collaboration with your clients as being vital to delivering good work, but that doesn’t look the same for everybody. It’s not without risk. It is the reason that we have unlimited client users and we make that part of our platform. We believe in it, but we don’t want to give you the idea that just, “Oh, here it is and it’s the golden brick road and just skip down it all the way happily to Oz.” There are risks along the way. We could keep pulling on that thread with that analogy by the way, but we won’t. But each of these three that we talked about, both visibility, perception and efficiency, there are some risks, and so we want to call those out. We want to shine a light on those, and Susan is going to give you some ways to mitigate some of those.
So I think when it comes to risks around visibility, the first of the three on our list, Susan. The first thing is just, “Oh my gosh, I am afraid of giving too much visibility.” What are some of your reactions with the organizations you’re working with? Agencies and service-based firms where they kind of push back on this one or their eyes get a little wide?
Susan:
I think there is a part of every agency, every professional services firm that just wants to deliver the perfect thing at the end, and they don’t want anyone to know how the sausage is made. And there could be a lot of things going on to get there that sometimes even if you’re structured and organized, it might feel a little chaotic. So that visibility to the client, especially most of these people know their clients well, and so one client might be totally fine with it, comfortable. And another one, it might put them through the roof, they’re so freaked out. So some of it is knowing your clients when you’re dealing with that too. Who is going to respond better than somebody else? That is absolutely a risk you have to look at.
Logan:
Let’s get into kind of some of the nitty-gritty. Before we hopped on here, Susan, I went to some of our internal teams, some of our sales team at teamwork.com and some of our partner team who’ve worked with a lot of agencies. They’ve heard both our customers and prospects kind of wrestle with some of these risks, and one of the things that came up from our team was visibility of internal deadlines. So a client might say, “Hey, I see this and I see you’ve got a deadline for this individual of Wednesday, but you told me I’m not getting this back till Friday.” What are your thoughts on managing some of those internal visibility risks as we’ve been terming it today?
Susan:
There’s definitely a concern if the communication’s not good with the client that they don’t understand, “Oh, there’s a quality control part of this”, or the fact that the art director finished the logo design does not mean it goes straight to you. There are other things that might have to happen to it to make it ready for print or any of the other steps along the way.
Now, those steps might be in teamwork or it might be that you’re giving yourself the cushion internally. We’ve all done that. Schedule something early in case something’s got to be pushed today. That really involves the communication you have with your client, for them fully understanding the process you go through. But it is a risk if you have the person who’s going to keep pushing on you and pushing on you, “Why can’t I have it the day earlier? What are they doing?” All of those kinds of things. So those are going to be a little bit more open to be perceived.
Logan:
What are some of your tips? Because you guys have some great team members at Beyond the Chaos that are phenomenal at managing those client relationships, some of those pushy clients to use your words, I don’t think anybody listening to this would push back on that terminology, it’s part of agency life. In managing some of that pushback you get from clients, what are some red flags? What are some ways to maybe get ahead of that pushiness if you’re starting to sense it a bit with a client inside the software where you’re delivering?
Susan:
I’m a big believer in communication and education on the process. So if your client is one that’s pushing back, just calmly partnering with them and communicating that, “Listen, we want to get you the best product. These are the steps we go through after this step is done so that we internally have all looked at it with different eyes or we put it through the rigors of preparing it for print as opposed to just sending you an RGB file that won’t ever print well. Those steps are important to deliver you the highest quality piece, and the last thing we want is for you to have to kick something back to us because it wasn’t what you wanted because we didn’t do the right process.” So some of it is that open communication for that client to understand that that delay that they might be perceiving is actually to their benefit
Logan:
And get ahead of some of their questions of, “Hey, you might see this as a gap or a delay. It’s not actually a delay and here’s why.” And as you said there, you’re tying it to the result that they really want. This is how it’s going to deliver, because I think you can swing to the other side of the fence when it comes to delivering client work and be perceived as the DMV if it’s just like, “Well, that’s our process”, right? You’ve got to train your team members on how to educate your clients on the process other than saying, “Well, that’s our process”, because that’s all about you. That’s all about even in the language, it’s our versus this is how we’re going to get you the best outcome, the best deliverable, the best thing that we’re producing for you, right?
Susan:
It makes a big difference. Words matter, people.
Logan:
Yes.
Susan:
I think another part of that that plays into that too. I mean when we think about say, design, web design, the last thing your client wants is something that’s delivered to them that has a bunch of bugs in it so that they’re the one responsible for finding all that. So all of that is just stuff that you can use as ammunition, for lack of a better word, to explain to them why this has to be this way and how it is in their best interest that it’s this way.
Customizing the Client Experience in Project Management
Logan:
Absolutely. And use that language of what’s in it for them, not turning it back on your process. Now, Susan, I want to turn to something that is related to where we opened it up, the internal communications being visible is definitely one of the risks. It’s one of the common concerns. It ties into that line that you said earlier that I heard in my time running a client experience team at an agency is, “We don’t want to show them how the sausage is made. Sometimes we got to yell across the factory floor and sometimes stuff falls off the line, those sorts of things.” So if it’s not, “I can’t yell at my team members in front of my customer.” That’s not necessarily the reason, but you want to manage that internal communication versus external communication. What are some of the advice for mitigating this risk that you’re giving to agencies and service firms on this point?
Susan:
Well to this end, communication needs to be intentional no matter what. And I think that that is something that all of us need to take to heart and figure out. First, one thing that teamwork lets you do, broadcast things to everybody, things that maybe people don’t need to know about. When you’re sending a message out, you really have to take into consideration of who needs to hear it. Whose time am I taking to weed through their notifications or their emails or however they’re receiving this information? Is it valid that they are part of this? And that plays not only into your client, but into your team members as well. Everybody on the project doesn’t need to know everything about every step.
And so I think while there is a risk that you can overwhelm somebody externally, a client, with details, you can do it internally too. So if we’re approaching our communication from the standpoint of who needs to hear this or who needs to answer this and only including those people, that solves the problem both ways. So you can look at it either way. Teamwork lets you lock down that communication too. So if somebody needs eyes on it, great. Include them. If they don’t, leave them out. They can always go look at it if they need to.
Logan:
Yeah. So the principle here is be thoughtful about the communication, especially not only what is the information, but who needs to know it and who’s going to benefit from it versus who is it just going to add noise to. And then some of the tactical things are choosing who gets the notification, who’s following that task, those sorts of things that you guys are executing for instance, within the platform. Am I kind of summing that up well, Susan?
Susan:
To a degree, and if something is really not going right, I think we all agree. Get out of the email, get out of the task, get a meeting, pull some people together, let’s talk about it like human beings and solve it. And in a lot of cases, that solves it quicker too. So if you’re having that issue of going back and forth in these long threads, it might be a heads-up that you’re not talking to each other enough.
Logan:
I like that. So again, the whole conversation today is about the risks and the opportunities. You’re turning a risk into an opportunity. This is one that I think a lot of people get stuck on is, “Well, we don’t want clients to see how we’re interacting with each other.” Maybe it’s not as extreme as the story that you called out initially, but whether we’re having those, maybe a little bit too heated conversations in comment tasks or Slack or email or text message, the solution is actually this probably needs to be a meeting, and that would be the case, whether your clients are in your software or not. So I love how you’re bringing that back up a level to how we work remotely, how we work with teams and those sorts of things even within this specific topic. I love it.
Susan:
I mean, I hate the phone. I’m not going to lie, but there are times that you need to use the phone.
Logan:
Right, right. This question might be particular to folks who are on our platform, but a big reason that folks are using teamwork.com oftentimes is going beyond just project management to the full, managing the full client life cycle, looking at budgets and estimation and time spent in time tracking against tasks and projects. And that can lead to maybe some awkward or difficult conversations with clients when they say, “Well, why are we being charged for this? It took less time”, those sorts of things. Any again, tips in general or specific and tactical to the platform that you would offer to folks who see that as a risk they need to mitigate as well in this theme of visibility?
Susan:
It definitely can be a risk because money makes everyone nervous. I’m a firm believer in money is not emotional if you’re communicating about it. If you’re, “Hey, listen, we’re on track, we’re making the right budget”, or, “Oh, this task, this took like three times as long, but hey, this next one, we’re going to knock it out early.” If you’re not communicating this regularly, if you’re not talking about money regularly with your client, you’re going to have other issues. It does become this emotional thing.
So again, two sides, right? Being able to see the budget can maybe raise a red flag early that you might not have called out. Maybe the client does say, “Wait, why are you spending 10 hours doing this? It’s not worth it to me” because no one had the conversation. So you could stop something from becoming a big catastrophe. Also, it gives you an opportunity to educate your client and again, partner with them better when they’re not understanding that, “Oh, maybe we brought a new junior web developer in to create this for you. And yes, they’re posting their time, but you know what? We’re going to write off half of that because we know they’re learning. We just want to make you aware of that upfront. So don’t freak out about the hours.”
Having that kind of communication with your client makes you a better partner. Shutting it down makes you more of a, “Here is the thing I deliver you” instead of more of, “Hey, we’re working together to get this accomplished for you.”
Logan:
Yeah, if you want to be seen as that expert, not just the deliverer of that widget or whatever it is, whether you’re a marketing agency, a PR agency, web development, all sorts, there’s something at the end and you don’t want to be just tied to what is that that you’re delivering, which actually does raise, as we talked about our second risk here. So we talked about visibility a good bit. We spent some time there. I think that’s number one on most people’s list that was coming back with several comments from our internal team.
Managing Client Perceptions and Expectations
Number two is perception. And there is this risk of, “Well, if we bring someone in, they kind of see our process.” They can see, “Well, hey, it’s not rocket science. Maybe we could do this.” Or they get so laser focused on these conversations about how much time it’s taking you, what are the steps to the process that they lose sight of the outcomes that they hired you to deliver. So what’s your advice to folks in managing and mitigating this risk of perception when it comes to clients being in the platform where you’re delivering the work, Susan?
Susan:
So you are not the only one from agency days who heard perception is reality. I got it too. And it’s absolutely true. What they are perceiving is their reality, even if it’s not real. So part of what you have to do, and as someone in an agency, all agency members know, you always have to put your best foot forward with a client. And honestly, that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good customer service and it is a better human way to communicate as well.
So one thing, don’t yell at each other in there. Come on. That perception, we don’t want. We don’t want the perception of, “Everything’s out of control and no one knows what they’re doing.” If the client has the perception of, “Oh, this is easy, I’ll take it and run with it”, maybe you’re not letting them into it enough because we all know that this is really hard. It’s really hard. And so if they want to take it and run with it themselves, I might quietly say, “Well, good luck.” But there is a lot of fear. I think, “Oh, they’re going to get the process. They’re going to understand it. They can take this anywhere.”
Well, our process for delivering the thing, whatever it is, it’s really not that different. We might have a couple steps here or there, different from another group, but in essence, we’re all doing the same thing. So this is not some secret sauce that we need to keep quiet about. It’s not wholly proprietary process. I mean, maybe you think it is, but probably everyone’s doing it the same way. So I would not worry that much about somebody trying to replicate what you’re doing or to take it in-house because it’s so simple. If you’re making it look that simple, more power to you because usually it’s not. So I would say most of those things involve intentionality and communication, we’re back to that, as well as making sure that you are looking at it from how it is being received. So that pretty much sums up both those things.
Logan:
Yeah, I think that is a good call out. One of the things we’ve talked about here before is it kind of reminds me of how I look at content marketing. Some people are like, “Oh, we don’t want to give away the secret sauce.” Well, when you do that, you prove to the people who don’t want to spend the time doing it themselves and to the people who are the DIYers who are just, “I want to take that and run with it.” They probably weren’t going to pay the premium to have you do it anyway. So you’re losing is actually nothing. And what you’re gaining is more trust, credibility, and that status of authority that you know what the heck you’re doing with the people who could work with you, would work with you and be in this case are working with you. So I would agree with you from that angle for sure.
The third piece we talked about, Susan, as an opportunity is efficiency. Obviously we’re big believers in the efficiency of bringing your clients in to where you’re doing the work. We have a lot of large HubSpot agencies that I talked to last year at Inbound that just say, “Hey, when clients need to approve something, they go in, they check that box, it’s as easy as that and they love it.” However, the client might push back on this idea of efficiency and just say, “Well, you’re just giving me another tool to use. Give me something else. Can you just join our freaking Slack channel please so that we can tell you what we want? That’s where we are at. This isn’t actually an efficiency gain for us.” Tell us a little bit about how you manage this both in general and maybe some specific tactics with the platform that you guys have been able to leverage at Beyond the Chaos.
Susan:
Well, there’s no question that there are two types of people who use teamwork. There are the ones that are like, “Look at all the things. I can do all the things. I can see all the things.” And then there are the ones that are like, “All the things are overwhelming. I can’t stand to look at it. And also, I’m your client. I’m paying you to do it. I don’t want to do it.”
So you could have two people at the same client have those two different reactions. So it is a challenge of how to work with them. And I’m going to go back to relationships and partnerships. You have to know how to deal with the individual people to get it in. Doesn’t really change your process because teamwork lets you email things. It just comes into their email box as a different looking email that they can reply to.
And so if you’re getting pushback like that, I would suggest saying, “Hey, listen, totally get it. You don’t have to do anything in here. We’ll communicate with you however you’d like. However, it will cost you less. It will make your project run more smoothly if you’ll just log in once so that we can send you communications through the tool, all you have to do is reply.”
And then if you need to be in their Slack or you need to be on the phone or in Zoom with them to get additional information, that’s what your project manager is for. Let your project manager do their job and take care of all of the details of getting them put into teamwork properly if that client is refusing to participate. So you still gain some efficiency if you can communicate via email with them that way.
Logan:
Yeah, I can say even internally in the way that we use our own platform, oftentimes when I’m going through my own tasks and those sorts of things, I’m logging in, I’m within the system, but if it’s going back and forth on comments on a task, I get that email. I’ve got those notifications set up just like you’re advising agencies to set up for their clients that someone commented on this task, and I don’t have to go into the system to then reply and leave my comment. I can just reply to the email.
And so for me, I’m just working in the email, but for the one managing that project, everything is captured, managed, and accessible going forward. Like you said, heaven forbid something happened and you lose kind of that trail. It’s all within the project and the corresponding tasks. So I think that’s a very tactical thing, and I think, again, communicating and educating your clients on how you can work with them in the system that makes you efficient, but in the way that they find it most easy to use.
Susan:
Absolutely, and let’s bring up the integration with Slack right here too. The client could very well have those notifications come to their Slack so they could reply from within there too, if that’s how you wanted to do it. But you can set that up to run the way they want it to and still deliver them the efficiencies that they expect from a professional agency.
Logan:
Absolutely. Well, this has been a great conversation, Susan. We’ve talked about visibility, perception, and efficiency, both sides of the coin, the opportunities, the upside, as well as the risks in each of those. You guys have seen a lot of agencies through managing all of those risks and mitigating them. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you want to touch on? Any advice for folks before we get to our final segment of our Agency Life Fast Five and our Good Shout as we normally round it out?
Susan:
I mean, I don’t know if anyone could tell. I’m a proponent of having your clients in. I do think it makes things so much easier. Just treat them well, partner with them well, treat your team well. That’s really my big summary here. I don’t have anything brilliant new to add.
Logan:
Treat your team well. It comes back to that opening story that you started with, so I think that’s a really nice bookend as we enter our final couple of segments here on the show.
All right, Susan, we’re going to hit you with our Fast Five. Number one, if someone gave you an extra $10,000 a month, no strings attached, to better run your business, how do you think you would use it? Where would you invest that extra capital today?
Investing in Team Training for Better Client Service
Susan:
Training, for sure. I would have more training for my team in all sorts of different tools, and I would bring all of them to my upcoming teamwork training that I get to have in March.
Logan:
Yes, you and I are finally going to get to meet face-to-face in person. I’m glad we got that in there. All right, number two, Susan, what are some of your all-time favorite books especially that have impacted you as a business owner yourself?
Susan:
My favorites is Who Not How, which is fantastic to really implant in your brain that you should not be thinking of how to do it as a business owner, but who can do it for you. But the other one that I think is a big one, and it’s so simple and it’s so short, is The One Minute Manager because it really helps you manage your team quickly and effectively without, “Oh, they’re so surprised at the review.”
Logan:
Do you think there are some principles in that book that you’ve carried over to managing clients as well?
Susan:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s the constant communication that’s essentially, the book should be called that, but it makes a big difference.
Logan:
Yeah, someone who specializes in that, named it The One Minute Manager beyond you and I, but I’d support that as well. But oftentimes managing internal team members and managing clients, those principles just carry over. So quick aside over, we’ll go onto number three, four, and five in our Fast Five. I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you this one offline, so I’m excited to hear your answer. Susan, what’s one mistake you’ve made in running your business that you’re never going to forget?
Susan:
My first client was literally a sociopath, and I put a lot of eggs in that basket, and I won’t forget it. I won’t ever, ever, ever work with people we don’t like again.
Logan:
Wow, okay. If anyone relates to that, that is maybe one of the most shocking answers I’ve gotten to that question. 30 plus episodes in here, if that resonates with you listening or watching today, check out our previous episode. We’ll link to it in the description with Jackie Hermes on Avoiding Furious Clients, and she ended up talking about just how not to get to that point in the first place, how to look for those red flags in the sales process. Maybe you’ve got a sociopath or someone who’s just going to be mean or someone who’s going to end up yelling at your team. That one is great on that topic. So that one brings that one to mind.
All right, number four and five, Susan are two sides to the same coin. Number four, what do you think is the hardest part about agency life? And then tell us number five, the flip side. What do you think is the best part?
Susan:
The hardest part about agency life is I am going to go with the stress because the deadline-oriented world is inherently stressful and you have a whole bunch of different personality types pushing against those deadlines. So I’ll go with the deadlines.
The other side of the coin, what’s the best? Man, advertising is hard y’all, and how amazing is it when you do it? There is a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment that it’s really hard to find in many other industries. I say it all the time, “If you can do advertising, you can do anything.”
Logan:
I love that. Well, that’s a great place to round it out. What we want to do next, Susan, is give you a chance to give someone a shout-out who has impacted your career, especially as a business owner and entrepreneur yourself. Could be a digital mentor or someone you’ve looked up to or someone personally who’s impacted your journey. Who do you want to shout out today?
Susan:
Oh, there is no doubt. It is my dad, Don Dean. He is amazing. He has been an entrepreneur his whole life and he taught me how to do it with dignity, with class, with integrity, with honesty, and I so appreciate that.
Logan:
I love that. That is two episodes in a row where our guest has given the shout-out to their dad, and I love that we’ve got a theme there going. That is a great one.
Susan, for folks listening to this who you are new on their radar and they think, “Hey, you’ve added some value. You’ve seen this a time or two.” Just like Farmers Insurance, when it comes to working with clients, especially within the platform where you’re delivering the work. They want to connect with you or follow along with some of your content at Beyond the Chaos, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Susan:
Go to our website beyondthechaos.biz. Dot biz not dot com. And if you do beyondthechaos.biz/ebook, we’ll give you a free ebook too. All the contact information’s on that page too.
Logan:
I love it. All right, we’ll link to that in the description of this video, in the show notes of the podcast, as well as some of those previous episodes that I think you’ll enjoy that correlate nicely with the conversation that Susan and I had today. Susan, thank you so much for being our guest on Agency Life.
Susan:
Thank you so much for having me. This was fun, as I expected.
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