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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
Apr 12, 2023
Apr 12, 2023
42 min
In this episode, Sherrilynne Starkie, Social Media Expert and Host of the 50 Women Over 50 podcast, is going to tell us a horror story no business owner would ever like to go through. It’s an experience like no other, which involves talks about money, paperwork, and legalities.
Sherrilynne has been in marketing and communications approaching 30 years of experience, and during this time, she established her own public relations agency at the dead center of the Irish Sea.
She got a call from a tech guy looking to launch his own business. This figure had been introduced to Sherrilynne by a long-term and loyal client, and he was looking to launch a new telecommunications service. Sherrilynne was intrigued and took on the challenge, working with the new client on a monthly retainer for around 5–6 months.
At first, things were going great. Sherrilynne was crushing it, and the client seemed to be thrilled with her work. But then, disaster struck. The old client who had referred Sherrilynne to the new client reached out, wondering if they had been paid since they hadn't been receiving payment for their own services. She decided to give her client the benefit of the doubt, but alarm bells were going off in her head and instinct pushed her to do some more digging.
Sherrilynne soon found out that the new client had been consistently late with payments, always with some excuse or another. Eventually, the client stopped taking her calls and responding to her altogether. What a nightmare! But this didn’t faze Sherrilynne.
She decided to take matters into her own hands and took the new client to court, hoping to get the payment she was owed. However, it seems like it was never meant to be. The client filed for bankruptcy, and Sherrilynne was left with nothing to show for all her hard work and trouble in court. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but she knew that she had given it her all.
The story doesn’t end there though. Listen to the full episode to know all the important details!
Mar 29, 2023
Mar 29, 2023
50 min
In this episode, Kelsey Knutson, business coach, and podcast coach shared a tea-worthy story about her experience and survival of a “bridezilla.” While even talking about the experience grew a pit in her stomach, it helped her become the successful entrepreneur she is today. But we’ll get to that in a bit!
Let us rewind to when Kelsey had just started her hair & makeup artist business and was working on building connections to expand her clientele. A friend of a friend referred her to a certain client who was about to get married, and Kelsey was set to prepare the bride’s bridal hair as well as her bridesmaids’.
On the day of the wedding, everyone was hungover and late, and Kelsey had eleven looks to do – that’s 45 minutes each! Fast forward, she’d already started working on the bride’s look and was proud of herself for achieving the exact look they’d practiced during their trial run. She was just about to take a photo when the bride looked in the mirror and said, “I f*ing hate it”.
Imagine Kelsey’s surprise! She then asked the bride to figure out what kind of look she wanted and worked on the rest of the bridesmaids’ hair. The bride eventually decided she would prefer a messier look. Like the superstar that she is, she was able to fix the look and somehow got everyone done in time. At this point, Kelsey had already started feeling defeated but overheard the bride talking to her grandma and cursing her on the phone.
This is when Kelsey realizes that there’s probably something wrong with the bride. Red flags had started popping up left and right but she continued to pull through. But you know what the worst part is? Despite her best efforts, Kelsey ended up not getting paid for her services.
As the episode ends, Kelsey shares the importance of asking questions before committing to something, taking time to assess what you could do differently in certain situations, and establishing proper communication.
This episode is an eye-opener to businessmen and entrepreneurs, but you’ll need to listen to the whole episode to understand more!
Mar 2, 2023
Mar 2, 2023
53 min
Feb 8, 2023
Feb 8, 2023
51 min
In this episode, Robert Persichitte, a Financial Planner of Delagify Financial, shares a relatable adulting story of a client who absolutely hated his job and just wanted to get out of it.
This client was a pretty high-level attorney, a pretty high earner, and a very high-stress job. He wanted to retire as soon as possible. So Robert followed his usual process with the client and tried to put everything in the context of goals.
But this is where the problem came in with this client. The client gave him an estimate of about $6,000 a month in lifestyle expenses which is considered as having fun money, paying for things like groceries, and going out.
However, something common amongst high-earning clients is that they're unaware of the numbers they're actually spending. Robert then came to an actual estimate of the client's household spending, which totaled $10,000 a month. The catch is that his client was not the one in the household spending that money. He only spent about $2,000 a month, and the other $8,000 came from his wife.
At this point, Robert knew that his client's goal of early retirement wasn't possible. Robert formed a great strategy to resolve this issue, focusing on purposeful communication and subtle approaches to client management.
Watch the full episode to learn how he did it!
Sep 7, 2022
Sep 7, 2022
50 min
In this episode, Mark Herschberg, a Chief Technology Officer and author shares his story when he was working under “Evil Corp” (a code name for the company).
At that time, he was assigned to a company division that was working on creating a new type of video service/ video marketplace platform where viewers could watch content from movie studios and tv stations under controlled access. With this wonderful idea in mind, Evil Corp put out a press release stating their release date.
The catch is that Evil Corp wasn't very good at doing projects like this, so they decided to get a vendor to do it for them. But there’s more…The funny thing is the vendor wasn’t optimized for this project, and they wanted to bring in 2 more vendors that had the technology that Evil Corp needed.
By the time Mark was brought into the company, the project was launched. Instead of being a convenient video platform, everything was done manually by phone and email. Plus, there was a game of broken telephone going on between the 3 vendors and the internal team of the company.
As Mark said, everything was on fire, and he was there to put out the fires. By the end of the episode, Mark and Morgan talked about the essence of management, communication, and problem-solving, which could be helpful to you as well!