 This is for everyone out there that finds it challenging talking with clients. I know there's a lot of us because after all we're creatives and most creatives are introverts, myself included. I mean when I started off it was so hard to talk to clients and I avoided it at all costs. I'd rather just write emails and keep my communication behind the keyboard. But the thing is if we ever really want to grow in our business and be more effective and add more value to our clients and be able to position us as somebody more that could just get an order and fulfill the order but somebody that could really impact somebody else's business, somebody that could be truly effective, well we need to learn how to have conversations and communicate with our clients. So in my journey I had to walk through a whole lot of uncomfortableness in order to start to learn how to communicate and hold productive meetings and calls with clients. And I got a few tips that I use that I personally use that really helped me get through this and I know these are going to help others as well. And then some of these tips I still practice this day on every single call that I take. Tip number one spend 30 minutes before the meeting to structure the meeting and then practice going through the meeting. All right, this one was the first thing that I started doing because I found when I was jumping into meetings with clients, I was fumbling all over the place. I felt super awkward. I felt that the client was looking at me and talking to me awkward like who is this guy does even know what he's doing. So what I started to do was structure the meeting. Like I would actually plan it out. I would plan out how I wanted the meeting to go step by step and then write those steps down. After structuring the meeting, then I would practice practice it. I mean, even speaking out loud, I would spend time practicing right before the call. That way, when the client does jump on the call, I'm already in the zone. I know how I want the meeting to go in and really helped out a lot. Tip number two, write down a list of goals to accomplish in the client meeting. Now this is something I do still to this day on every meeting that I have. It was so effective when I was starting off and learning how to have meetings with clients. Once I started implementing this into my meetings, I saw huge results. So it doesn't matter now to this day if I'm on a big discovery call or if it's just going to be a 10 minute call with the client or if I'm just having a meeting with the team, always write down the list of the goals. What do we want to accomplish in the meeting? And the reason for this is it's really easy for a call to get sidetracked. It's really easy for the client to bring up something random and the client to steer the meeting in the wrong direction. Or us. It's easy for it to go in the wrong direction. We could start talking about dogs and puppies and things like that. And all of a sudden, it's like, wait, where are we at with, you know, with the project and then we're kind of stuck. Also, sometimes I get brain freeze. I don't know if this has happened to you. If you've ever been in a call with a client and then all of a sudden it's just like blank, like just frozen. It could be at a very embarrassing moment. But having those goals right there, you know, in front of you, okay, you get stuck against sidetracked, go right back to the goals. Where are we at with our goals? And then you see the next goal we need to achieve. They could go ahead and ask a question to get us to that goal and get the conversation in that way. That helps the conversation stay on track. Tip number three, let the client talk and do the listening. Take notes. All right, so we don't have to do all the talking. In fact, we don't have to do most of the talking. The best we could do is listen. And here's the thing. I found out in the very beginning listening wasn't my good strength. That wasn't even a strength at all. I didn't even know that. I thought I was a good listener, but then I realized when I was on a call with a client, and maybe you could relate that the client would start talking about what they want to accomplish, what they're looking to build. And my mind is just racing. I'm thinking of how we could do it. I'm thinking of what we could do. And before the client could even get through everything, I'm ready to start telling the client, yeah, we could do this. We'll use WordPress. We'll use this. I got this awesome plugin and we should just be listening. You know, we shouldn't be getting to the solutions yet because that's going to be the next stage. That's if we get the project, then we could take time to really digest what the client needs. So a trick that I learned in order to improve listening skills and to develop them was to take notes continuously. Now, it doesn't matter if the client is talking about their kids or wherever they're talking about, I am just constantly taking notes. I don't stop. And what I'm doing when I'm taking notes is I'm forcing myself to listen to the client. And that way I'm taking notes. And then when it is time for me to talk, I'm a bit more careful about when I talk and what I say. And tip number four, listen for the problems and the challenges the client is having instead of trying to offer the solutions. This is a follow up to tip number three, tip number three, we're just doing writing, taking notes, listening and trying to bite our tongue, stop them constantly talking. Tip number four, we're listening for something very specific. We're trying to find the problems and the challenges the client is having, the real problems, the ones that are in between the lines. There's always going to be more problems than meets the eye. That's why if a client is just going to communicate by email and just send you, you know, the documentation for what they're looking to get by email, you're never going to really get to find out what those problems are because we need to talk with the client. We need to start asking questions and we need to listen for those problems. See why I'm getting out here now. Now this is where we are getting into the next realm of adding value beyond just building a website because we are capable of doing so much more. That is how we grow. We grow by adding more value, being able to do more for our clients, being more effective. So all this learning how to communicate with our clients. This is getting us to the next step, to the next stage in our own business and what we're able to do. And I gotta tell you, it's a really good feeling when you find out you can't be effective for your clients and really make an impact on their businesses. What it normally looks like on my list of notes, it's a bunch of bullet points and I'm writing down bullet points and then I hear a problem the client has. I highlight it. Anytime I hear a challenge or a problem that the client has that is a problem for their business, I highlight it and I write it down. So that's what I'm listening for. We got one more tip. All right. Tip number five and this one's an important one for all of us. That is to under promise, over deliver. All right. I don't know if you're like me, but I want the client to like me. All right. I am a people pleaser by nature. I want the client to be wooed and wowed and I want to be able to tell me we could do this, we could do that. We can make this super dope and we'll put in this and that. We gotta hold back. All right. Gotta bite the tongue. We don't need the client to absolutely fall over in love with us by promising them everything because what's going to happen is we're going to get ourselves in a difficult situation. We're going to set expectations that are unrealistic and then when we don't deliver on all those, you know, it's not going to look so good for us. But if we do advice versa, let's say we know what we're going to do. We know what we're looking at and we give the client, okay, this is what we're looking to do, but we know in our own minds and our own hearts, we're going to do a bit extra. You know, we want to add these extra touches. I got other ideas that I want to do. I want to give this client something extra. We tell the client we're going to do A, B, and C, but then we deliver D, E, and F on top of it. Well, then it's going to, it's going to change the whole outcome of the project and how the client looks at us. So under promise over deliver and that's something I got to tell myself all the time. Gotta bite the tongue. You know, you got to really bite the tongue. And here's the thing when we're learning to talk to clients and we're learning the communication, it's, it's a learning process. You know, at first, it's not comfortable. It's uncomfortable. But we just got to remember we don't have to do all the talking. We just got to listen. And we got these tools here, these tools that I shared that I use and they work. Because let me tell you, you might not know this about me, but about, you know, nine, 10 years ago, I could not look people in the eye like my self-esteem was just gone. My self-confidence, there was no confidence. You know, I walked with a slump, I couldn't look people in the eyes. I was in a really bad shape. I had to do a lot of work, a lot of work and a lot of growth just to be able to look people in the eyes again. I had to force myself in order to learn and grow to do those things. And what we're doing here, we're doing with clients and we're learning how to talk to them and communicate with them. It's business growth, but we're also doing personal growth at the same time. Both are the same. A lot of them are the same. They both work the same here. So we're going to be learning both personal and business growth. Super important. And one thing really quick that I do want to address and that is for anybody out there where English is your second language. I've talked with many, many web creators, web designers, web developers that had great skills that were awesome people that were really good people and I had the pleasure of talking and get to know them. And a lot have opened up to me about feeling like they shouldn't talk on a call with a client out of the fear of being judged or being looked at, being looked down on because their English grammar isn't perfect. And I have to let you know that that is not true. It's not true at all. No one's going to look at you like that. You have to understand somebody is already willing to work with you. They're open to working with people outside of their country. They're open to it. They're totally fine with it. They're all good with it. You got to hop on a call and meet some amazing people. You can meet them. You can build relationships with clients. So it has nothing to do with the language or a second language. Don't worry about your grammar not being perfect because what it is, you get on the call and you get that feeling with someone. You know, you get that feeling and it works both ways. A relationship needs to start with honesty and trust. You know, that's how a good relationship starts. And it's hard to start a relationship with trust if we're just doing it by email and there's no other kind of communication or if we're getting on a call and somebody doesn't want to turn on the camera. You know, just recently I passed on a project and it sounded like a fun project. But the clients, it was weird. They did not want to turn on the camera. It's like, here I am. My camera is on. I'm feeling super awkward and these guys don't want to turn the camera on. I passed on the project. I might have been able to land it. It would have been good. It was good money, but I just can't see myself working for somebody who isn't willing to meet and greet and to give the chance to see if we're a good fit. And it goes in the other way too. I do hire people from time to time. I do hire contractors. I remember one time I was getting ready. I really wanted to hire these guys. They were awesome for like video stuff, but they would not get on the call for 10 or 15 minutes. I just felt like, I don't know. I don't want to hire somebody to work with somebody who I can't meet and who I can't get a sense of who they are. I want to find out, I'll be a good fit. So that's why it's so important to start to learn how to communicate with our clients because they feel the same way as well. And if the clients don't want to talk, there's a good chance that they're not going to be a good client. All right. There's a very good chance about that. But this way it gives you the opportunity to work with somebody that you want to work with. Well, I hope this video helped out. I know it's a bit longer, but this is something I'm really passionate about because you know, when I started my web design journey, this is something that I could not do was a huge challenge of mine. And I know as creatives, it's a big challenge for a lot of us. Like we're always learning how to design better, code better, build websites better, but there's other skills we need to learn in order for us to grow and also be a more effective and offer more value to our clients. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments. Also, if you have an idea about a video, you would like to see me make a topic you would like me to speak about, create some content around, drop them in the comments. I'm always looking for good ideas and I'm going to get back to everybody. I'll be back again soon with more web design related content. Thank you.