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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
Monday Apr 12, 2021
Monday Apr 12, 2021
In our second episode of Client Horror Stories, Chris Johnston from L2D, tells us a both passionate and unbelievable story about a young start up that he worked with almost ten years ago (but that he remembers as if it’d been yesterday).
From the first moment, Chris and his team developed a very close relationship with this group of young guys with a great idea that they believed in. However, beginning from a surprise move-in that he chose to go along with, bombshells just never stopped coming. Even when Chris and his partners tried to handle them all (because, of course, they happened to be the nicest people ever), things just started to get unbearable.
This story includes everything from employee-kidnap to crazy announcements that required a pizza party to be made, and even a fist fight for a chair. All of this leading to an ending you never expected: Having your company absorbed by someone that began as your super nice StartUp client.
Chris finishes his experience with a couple of very valuable learnings: How to read people outside of the actual content of their words, realizing when it’s time to push the “stop” button with a client (and anyone) and that sometimes you need to prioritize your mental health over money. To conclude, Morgan and Chris give us a bottom line on the importance of writing things down and getting paid on a regular basis, no matter how nice everyone involved is.
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Friday Apr 09, 2021
Friday Apr 09, 2021
In our first take in Client Horror Stories, we have Artur Maklyarevsky from Design2Dev, who’s been in the Startupland for years, sharing with us his heartbreaking (and also very recent) story. You’d think after a long time working with the same type of projects, you are probably going to have everything under control and have a full automated StartUps scientific method, right?
However, Artur here shows us how easy it is to leave aside the key factor when it comes to this field: The failure probability. Yellow flags, unwritten conditions and arrangements, lack of information in a contract that was later used against him, are just a few of the tags this episode could answer to. On and on, Artur kept telling the client what could go wrong and what improvements needed to be done, and on and on his client kept ignoring him, until the least surprising thing ever took place: Every failure that Artur predicted happened. Only this was at their launch party, in front of 300 people.
In this Client Horror Stories episode, we’ll have the opportunity to learn through Artur’s experience on how an idea that seemed very exciting and fun to pull out with a friend turned out to be a conflict-of-interests nightmare that lead to the worst finale: Having a bunch of strangers taking over your project and your team due to a serial of yellow flags you decided to ignore, and a “Don’t worry man, I won’t stiff you” as a Kiss of Death.
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