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Episodes
Tales from those on the front lines of dealing with clients. Tales of difficult clients, complex situations, relationship management - and how massive client management problems were solved, and what they learned. Largely those running agencies, but all across different professional services.
Episodes
Tuesday Nov 30, 2021
Tuesday Nov 30, 2021
Today’s episode brings us, straight from Hollywood, Rick Schirmer, CEO & Founder of Viral Brand, with a super interesting and incredibly well told story that, regardless of the horror that made it CHS worthy, actually has a happy ending.
Rick’s tale brings us back to 2020 (or, as he calls it, the “pause” year) when he took under his wing a “cut deal” client with very little experience, and a lot of expectations. Along with some very powerful lessons on cheap clients, setting boundaries, and trusting your instinct, Rick shares with us a key learning from the whole experience: the inequality generated when someone gives you something that means everything to them, and very little to you. And yes, no matter how deep that sounds, we are talking about budget.
“Influencer sommelier” and “delusional button” are only a couple of awesome concepts that we’ll definitely steal from Rick, and definitely only a peak at how fun this story turned out to be.
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Monday Sep 27, 2021
Monday Sep 27, 2021
In our 21st take at Client Horror Stories, we have Ben Nuttall, Software Engineer at BBC News Labs, with a story that, from the very beginning, has us wondering what’s with people’s common sense: showing up for an interview all dressed up, only to have the interviewer receive you in shorts and flip flops, and announcing that the person who called you in was no longer working there.
Ben’s tale takes us back to 2011, when the apps market was flourishing, and everyone trusted them to get them instant success. So much that a properties company figured it was a great idea to have a small team developing quick and easy apps to make some extra money. But you see the problem with having an absolutely unrelated industry’s company dive in the app development business is that they actually believe two people and one designer can develop 2 apps everyday, and believe pushing employees to the edge is the right way to accomplish it.
Today’s narrative brings us a bunch of different horror moments, such as bosses that take you to their offices to yell at you until you quit, so they don’t have to fire you, and other bosses that hire someone’s son to be your boss, even though they have 19 years old and zero experience. Along with a wide variety of absolutely bizarre and unbelievable moments, the older and more experienced version of Ben can’t believe he actually went through.
However, as every good story does, Ben’s one leaves us with some very valuable tips and lessons: First of all, if something smells weird, don’t hesitate to ask someone you know and trust in your industry what they think about it. Secondly, find people to learn from, and make sure you have at least some of them in your workplace. And finally, even bad experiences can be worth living, even if it’s just for the hope of it all.
About Ben:
Ben is a software engineer building prototypes for BBC News, and previously spent 6 years at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Ben likes Python, Linux and all things open source.
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Morgan Friedman
Friday Sep 10, 2021
Friday Sep 10, 2021
Our 20th take at Client Horror Stories brings in a particularity that sets apart from the rest: there are actually no clients involved. In today’s episode, we have Mark Jacobsen, author of Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal, with an excruciating story that has us sharing his pain from the very beginning.
Mark’s narrative brings us the point of view of a military pilot during the hottest years of war with an unstoppable will to help the Syrian refugees, which eventually led him to begin a non-profit with his own resources. His tale starts in the very beginning of the motivation for it, then goes through his innovative idea of using drones to reach places he couldn’t fly to, and eventually gets to the breakdown point: creating a 3-acre wildfire in Stanford.
What’s so special about today’s episode, is the fact that it teaches us that, no matter how pure our intentions are, some moonshots can be achieved by just trying and trying. Among some of the many lessons that this story taught us, we shall highlight Mark’s point on being able to create and maintain healthy habits both for you and your team, and making sure you have a business plan before you start anything, even when your anything is a nonprofit. But overall, it teaches us that even though our intuition can really help us see a problem coming, sometimes other people’s intuition can also help us find the right solutions to it.
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Monday Aug 30, 2021
Monday Aug 30, 2021
In our 19th take at Client Horror Stories, we have James Hush with a story very different to anything else we’ve heard: for the first time in Client Horror Stories, we have the story of a client with nothing to do with the tech world, and we definitely loved it. Not only today’s guest comes from the music industry, but he also has an awesome ability to link bands and shows management to handling a traditional enterprise and its clients. And also, he was happy to share with us many clips from his teenage band.
Today’s tale brings us back to when James was a college kid with rockstar dreams, and was taken under the wing of a show manager who taught him everything he knew. So when he was experienced enough, the best thing that ever could have happened happened: he was hired to plan and manage the event of his most admired label in the world. However, if everything was so great, he would not be telling his story here, would he?
James’s tale is as exciting as it is worth listening to, and it leaves us not only with some pretty cool Beatles and Aerosmith’s anecdotes, but also a lot of valuable lessons on handling clients, no matter the industry you work in. So, as a general best practice in James language: don’t focus on just one project at a time, choose your door person, and, no matter what happens, write down the terms beforehand. Oh, and over anything else: that sometimes just showing up and doing what you are asked to makes a huge difference.
About James:
James has given teams the ability to ship features at 5 pm on a Friday in 15 minutes to millions of users. He believes any engineering team can deliver high quality features that customers love on time, without working late or opening a bottle of Advil.
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Monday Aug 23, 2021
Monday Aug 23, 2021
In our 17th take at Client Horror Stories, we receive Violet Femmes, who brings us a dramatic and introspective story that lasted two years but gave her lessons for a lifetime. Today’s episode has a therapy-like tint that definitely makes the narrative strike a significant chord in us.
Opening with the phrase “I am terrific at making mistakes”, Violet’s tale has more than enough elements to make it a memorable one, but if we had to choose a couple of them to highlight they would definitely be emails “accidentally” sent to the wrong people, a lot of fancy wine, bewaring procurement, and the fact that horror comes not only from your client, but also from your own company.
Today’s episode leaves us slightly unsettled, and the realization that sometimes, no matter how hard you work, some things just can’t be accomplished. Violet’s tale teaches us that, every now and then, not even a 36 hours workday can get all your tasks done, and that’s when you need to take a step back and be able to ask for the help you need, and hope that your company is there to back you up.
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