 introducing our next speaker. Hi. Is this on? Can you hear me? Can the people over there hear me? Can you see me? Well, then move. Good afternoon and thank you for coming. My name is Mike Montero and I am a designer. And I am here to help you. And I know that the vast majority of you are engineers. Are there any designers here today? Can I see some hands? I saw one over there. All right, that's good. But here's the thing. We are part of the same process. We do the same thing. Whether we call ourselves engineers or whether we call ourselves designers, the work that we do is always experienced together. We share a craft. And I care about that craft because I think it's an important craft. And a craft when we do it right can mean the difference for the difference in a better life for the people who come in contact with our work. So it's worth practicing right. And I know all of you feel the same way. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here today. I'm sure being here today has nothing to do with not being at work on a Friday. I have some bad news for you though. You have been lied to. You have been deceived. You have been told fictions. You have been bamboozled. You, my dear brothers and sisters, have been sold a bill of goods. Your designers have lied to you. They told you they needed inspiration to work. They told you that going to a requirements meeting was only gonna cloud their creativity. They talked you into buying a plotter so they could print out really large posters of Morrissey. But people lied to them as well. Their design professor told them that if they just followed good, simple design basics, if they just kept things simple, if they made it Swiss, if they just used Helvetica, if they just kept everything to what tight little grid, their clients couldn't help but be swayed by it. And he was wrong. The mayor of Brooklyn told them that if they just poured their soul into it, if they just lovingly crafted it, if they stayed true to themselves, if they were more pure than anybody else, then nobody could help but see how bright their heartlight was. And that in the end, doing what you love and expressing yourself was the highest calling that a designer could have and oh my God, he was full of shit. Their design schools, their design schools taught them that if they could just talk about their work with other designers and formally critique it with people who understood the same language, then everything would be fine. These people steal designers money every year, design education in the US is terrible and it keeps graduating people who are not ready to do the job and this is something that we need to solve. You were told that good design sells itself. You were told that good things come to those who wait. You were told that quality just somehow magically rises to the top. You were told that making was enough, that your place was in front of a screen so they labeled you a creative, gave you a panda hat and put you to work. You were deceived. Does good design sell itself? Fundamentally no. No it does not. I don't understand what everybody expects in that slide. Now I run a design shop. I run a design shop called Mule in San Francisco and it's a small design shop. It's small on purpose. I always wanted to keep it small and we stay in business by moving projects through the door. The projects come in, fingers crossed, we do the work and the projects go out and everybody's happy and we get paid. And for all that you hear about a designer's quality of life, a collaborative environment, having beer on tap in the break room and all of the other reasons that people tell you about why they love their work environments, there is one thing that will always constantly hold true. If you stop paying people, they stop coming to work. Are you nodding no? Are you currently working without getting paid? This means that I need to do four things. As a guy who runs a design shop, one, I need to get work. This is hard enough. Two, I need to move the work through the shop and ensure some level of quality to it. Three, and four, I gotta get paid. We manage to stay in business because we manage to sell the work that we do. Wait a minute, am I at a sales conference now? No, you are not at a sales conference. We are still talking about design. I'm not talking about going out and getting sales leads. I am talking about how you present your work to a client. And this matters whether you're a designer or a developer or whatever you make, whatever you do, you are eventually going to have to convince someone that what you did was right. This is about making the argument for your work. This is about putting your work in front of a client or a boss or a manager or a venture capitalist or whoever else you're putting it in front of. This is helpful whether you work in a studio or an agency or a big, weird place like this or even for yourself. You are always going to have to be convincing somebody that what you did is right and matching decisions that you have made to the project goals. That's what I mean by selling. Now the good news is that you can do all of this with an incredibly simple formula. It is so simple, there are two steps to it. Step one, do good work. This should be obvious. I'm not here to teach you how to do good work today. Let's assume that you all do good work. Number two, persuade people that it's good work. Now here's why this equation is so beautiful. If you take either of these things out, it totally falls apart. If you take out the good work, then I'm just teaching you how to push swill. I have no interest in teaching you how to push swill. If you take out the persuasion, then you might as well not have done the good work because nobody's gonna see it anyway. Now a designer who can do good work and persuade somebody that it's right is worth more to me as a person who's trying to run a business than somebody who does amazing work but has no idea how to sell it to a client. The former is helping me meet payroll. The latter is a burden to my payroll. No matter how amazing their work is, they are a burden. The myth that good design sells itself is just that. It's a myth. Good ideas are rarely obvious. Good ideas need a push. Let me show you an example. Who knows what this is? Hands in the back. Obviously, obviously this is a hula hoop. Who's seen the hud-sucker proxy? Not enough hands are going up. You should go home and see the hud-sucker proxy tonight. So in the hud-sucker proxy, weird-ass Tim Robbins who's always taller than you remember him being, he walks around and he walks around with a slip of paper in his pocket. It's all folded up and he's had it in there for years and it's got this little circle and he keeps showing it to people and going, you know, for kids. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world, except it's not obvious at all. He was trying to convince people that what he had in his pocket was a major breakthrough idea. And it was. In the first two months that the hula hoop was launched, they sold 25 million. That stupid little circle. And every time I watch this movie, I cringe because dumb old Tim Robbins is carrying around a 25 million dollar idea and he has absolutely no idea how to sell it. He's got this stupid gleam in his eye and he just keeps going, you know, for kids. This is a terrible sales job. It leaves too many dots to be connected. It doesn't really tell the client what this thing would be for, whether there would be a demand for it, whether there's any research as to whether this is a good idea. Dumbass Tim Robbins had neither any data nor a story to back up his stupid circle. All he had was this one dumb, adorable line. You know, for kids. And we laugh at that. And yet, I have seen so many designers in my time throw a sight up on a screen during a presentation and basically do the same thing. You know, for users. That is the same sales job. I have done this myself. Selling is one of the toughest skills that a designer can pick up. It is so tough that some designers convince themselves that it's not even a skill they will ever need. They're happy to leave it to somebody else. Maybe they can leave it to an account manager. Maybe they can leave it to a creative director. But the thing is, if you let somebody else do your job for you, you are giving up the farm. You are giving up your agency. And you can't complain because somebody else is selling your work wrong. You need to be doing it yourself. Now, how many of you are now going, my boss won't let me? Your boss is also a choice. Maybe make a better choice. That nervous laughter from the managers. Selling is a core design skill. You need to be able to explain every single decision that you have made to a client or a boss. And you need to be there. You need to be there in person to answer questions. You need to be there in person to receive their feedback. And you need to be there in person to see the look in their eye when you're showing them something for the first, second, third, and fourth time. You need to be there because when the client says, change this to blue, that account manager is just going to write down change this to blue and then probably do a bunch of cocaine. Only a designer or... I'm so much trouble right now. Only a designer or a developer is going to know to ask, what are you hoping to accomplish with that request? What does that do for us and how does that meet a goal? Because those are questions that we have been trained how to ask. And how many of you have had an account manager or a creative director return from a client presentation with a gigantic list of prescriptive changes that had absolutely zero to the project goal and without any context whatsoever, and you roll your eyes and, oh my God, how designers love to roll their eyes. And you get angry. You get angry that they dare to walk in with this. And you should be angry. You should be angry that somebody didn't do their job except that somebody was you, sweetness. You do not get to be angry because somebody else had to do your job because you didn't want to do it yourself. And I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret just between the two of us. Last year sucked. Last year really sucked. If you ran a small design agency, it was one of the most terrible years that I've ever gone through in 15 years of being in business. Clients were taking a longer time to sign. There were fewer of them. They were all trying to jack you on budget. And while I try to stay away from all of that ridiculous all the agencies are dying, chicken little bullshit, because I've been around enough that I know that this stuff is cyclical, there were times when keeping the studio afloat and making sure that I could pay all of my people meant that I had to walk out of a presentation with an approval so that we could build a client. Or we would die. Our very survival depended on our ability to sell design. And great design, no matter how great it is, if you can't sell it, does not keep your lights on. And every studio owner that I know, every person who hires designers made two lists last year. And if they're telling you they didn't, they are also lying to you. And they were lists of who was staying and who was going. And sadly, a lot of people I know had to pull out these lists this year and they had to make hard decisions. The number one criteria for deciding which list you went on is can you sell design or can't you? If you're a designer, the best way, or a developer, the best way to measure whether your job is safe is can you sell the work you do? Not just can you make stuff, but can you convince people that the stuff you make will take you to the next phase of a project? Because then I can get an approval, then I can invoice. And that means that you need to be able to present your work, you need to be able to present it on point and correct. Because presenting how we sell our work is the life force of staying in business. So to help you with this, I have come up with the 13 biggest mistakes that I have seen designers make during client presentations. Do you know how I gathered these 13 mistakes? Yes, you, you should be getting paid for what you do. I have made all of these mistakes myself. I continue to make some of them. I get a little better at it every time, but if you're aware of what you're doing, you'll get slightly better and eventually you'll stop making so many of them. So I want to tell you what they are, but before I do, I want to go over a couple of assumptions. One, as I said, I'm not teaching you how to do good work today. So let's assume the work is good, because I don't want to teach you how to push crap. And two, let's assume that the work is tested, that it actually works, because I'm not here to teach you how to convince somebody that broken crap is actually good. All right, let's get started. Number one, you are not there to be the client's friend. This one is hard. No one in the history of design has ever hired somebody to be their friend. There are other professions for that. They are not called design. They hired you to solve a business problem. Your client hired you because you are the expert at a thing they are not. They hired you because they have a business need that you are uniquely qualified to solve. And in hiring you, they have acknowledged that you have an expertise that they need. But don't take my word for it. Everything I learned, I learned from watching TV. I will deal with the help the way I want to. He is not the help. He's not a servant or a slave. He's a professional. He's a person with a skill you do not have, which is why you hired him. Take it from her. You have been brought in to add your expertise to the client's expertise to help them accomplish a goal that they could not accomplish without you. What they didn't hire you to do was make them happy or to be their friend. And your decisions need to revolve around how well you are meeting their goals, not how happy you are making them. And while you should do everything in a professional and pleasing manner, this is not me giving you the leeway to be a jerk. You should make sure that you don't conflate helping them achieve their goal with making them happy. They can be happy later when all the good work that you did actually launches, and they finally get that promotion they've been waiting for. And believe it or not, part of a service professional's job, and we are service professionals, is to sometimes deliver bad news when we have to. Can you imagine, if you went to your dentist, and the dentist found a cavity and he decided, I'm not going to tell them about this cavity because I don't want them to not like me. Can you imagine taking your car in to get serviced and the mechanic finding that the brakes needed to be replaced but not telling you that your brakes needed to be replaced because they didn't want to upset you? That would be dumb and dangerous. Can you imagine your tax accountant being afraid to tell you how much money you actually owed because they didn't want you to get upset? That is also criminal. Those professions have ethics. So does what we do. And when we find something terrible and bad, we have to tell the client, hey, I found something terrible and bad. And I know that those conversations are hard, but imagine the conversation that happens down the road when you kept something from a client or you went ahead and you designed or developed some crazy-ass idea that the client had that you knew would not work because you didn't want to upset them. It doesn't work like you thought it didn't and now their business has gone under, they've had to lay everybody off and they've called you into their office to tell you that which is the more difficult conversation because when you're avoiding the first one, you are locking yourself in for the second one. They are going to ask you to do things that run counter to achieving the goals that they set up. That's just the nature of clients and they do this because they're nervous and they're anxious and we do a crappy job of dealing with that anxiety. The best way to do this is to present yourself as the expert that they hired, not their buddy, not their pal, but I'm the expert that you hired to solve this problem. Mistake number two, not getting off your ass. When a client walks into a presentation, they should never have to guess who is leading it. They should never have to guess who's in charge. It should be obvious from the minute they enter the room that you are the one they will be talking to today. Let them know that this is your room. Let them know that you've got things under control. Who remembers this guy? Captain Sully Sullenberger. That is right. Captain Sullenberger landed a plane on the Hudson River. Badass. Has anyone here ever landed a plane on the Hudson River? Okay. One of the most fascinating things about this story is that when they found the recorder box from the cockpit and they listened to that and they released this audio for everybody to hear. So there's chaos. There's chaos going on in the cockpit as they figure out what's going on. And then, very clearly, you hear somebody saying, my cockpit and everybody shuts up. There is absolutely no doubt in anybody's mind at that point in that cockpit who is in charge. Now, I want you all to stand up. I want you all to get used to this. Stand up. My cockpit. I cannot hear you. My cockpit. Oh, come on. My cockpit. It's my presentation. My presentation. My presentation. My presentation. My cockpit. I am in charge. I am in charge. My cockpit. Now, sit down because it's my stage. This is your room. And your first job when you are presenting work to somebody is to inspire confidence. Not just confidence in your work, but also confidence that the client hired the right person to do the work. Every interaction that you have with them is an opportunity to reaffirm that decision that they made. And you are going to see more confident if you're standing up. Your voice is going to carry better. You're going to be able to walk around. You're going to be able to move over to certain people. It creates a sense of more leadership and more intimacy at the same time. But, Mike, oh, Lord, I am a quiet and shy person. I'm self-effacing. Being insecure is part of my well-crafted persona, which I have honed over the years all since design school. Well, isn't that delightful? You know what else you are? You're not damn professionals, and you need to behave like it. Confidence is not... Here's a trick about confidence. Confidence isn't about you. It's not about making yourself feel better. It's about making your client feel better. It's about helping them see that they're in good hands. It's about showing them that that check they wrote had the right name on it. It's about their insecurity. These people have one shot at this project right. And of all of the people that they could have hired, somehow they ended up hiring you. Holy shit, that's great. So you need to... So the confidence that you're showing is for them. It reassures them. It's about putting them at ease. And that's good for you because the more they trust you, the more they'll be willing to let you do the job right. The less they'll interfere with how you're doing the job. And the more that they'll listen to your decisions. So you can sit quietly in the corner and speak in a really low hushed voice and wear the panda hat to client meetings. But you better be ready to go back to the office and implement a bunch more changes because the client wasn't confident in what you showed them because you weren't confident when you were showing it. Number three, starting with an apology. Every time you apologize, you are freaking the client out. Oh my God, I wrote these people a really big check and they're always apologizing when they're here. Every time you apologize, you are asking your client for another reason to distrust you. And every time you apologize, you're putting a future job in jeopardy because the people that you're talking to now are going to be the people who leave that job, move on to other jobs and hire you later. And that's how they're going to remember you. And no matter how much work you hoped to present that day, by the time you are in that room, it is the exact right amount of work. I have been to countless presentations that started with I'm sorry, I thought we were going to have more to show you today. That presentation is now effectively over. That is the only thing you are talking about. Now obviously don't do anything stupid like walk in with your zipper down, spill something all over your shirt. I've never done any of these things, I swear. Or show up late, forget an adapter. If you do something dumb like that, go ahead and apologize, but do not apologize for the work. And if you're really not prepared to show work that day, then it is better to cancel that presentation than to waste your client's time. The best way to fix a meeting is to cancel it. By the way, you can get away with this exactly once during a project. That is it. But by the time you are in that room, you need to be ready to present strong and exude confidence. Keep stressing this. The confidence is for their benefit, not for yours. They probably answer to somebody higher up. And if they hear you apologizing for the work, you know what they're going to start thinking of? They're going to start thinking of what it's going to be like when they have to apologize for the work to somebody above them. And that is not a good feeling. So do not put that in their heads. Number four, not setting the stage properly. You have gathered all of these incredibly busy important people together. They probably have better things to do, or so they think. So let them know why they're in this presentation. Let them know why they are a necessary and important part of what's going on here today. People really like feeling needed and they hate having their time wasted. So if somebody walks in and says, why am I here? You better have a good answer for that. Every single time you gather people together, you need to be able to answer two things. One, why are we here? Start the meeting by thanking them for their time. Let them know what their role is going to be. Let them know how what happens today will help us get to the next phase of a project. And let them know how important their participation in that is. Number two, this is the most important part of the meeting. When can we leave? Let them know what it'll take to end this meeting. If this meeting is about design approval, why not start it with something, I don't know, something vague like, we're here for design approval. And once you get it, guess what? That meeting is over. It is done. You can pack up your stuff. You can thank everybody for their time and you can leave. Never give anybody the time to un-make a decision that just worked in your favor. Last year, I published this book. You're my favorite client. It's about client relationships. Anybody here read it? I love you. There's room in my heart to love the rest of you. Seriously, buy it. So this is about client relationships. And it was written with the intent that this is the book that you hand to clients when you start a project. Like, hey, you've probably never done this before. This will teach you, or not teach you, avoid that word completely. This will let you know how these things generally go. This will help you be prepared to ask the right questions. And this will show you if I'm screwing up. It's car facts for design projects is what it is. And one of the stories, if you're ordering it now, I can wait until I'm done. One of the stories in this book is about one of my very favorite clients ever, Larry. Larry was awesome. Larry loved to argue, which is great because I love to argue, too. Larry was also incredibly passionate about what he was doing. And he was always arguing because he wanted to make sure that what we were doing was right. And he asked us all sorts of hard questions. And he was always willing to be swayed by a good argument, which is like the number one sign of a good client. They hold their opinions strongly, but not strongly enough that they can't be argued with. So Larry and I would go at it all the time. And one time we're just going at it and we had the same goal in mind. We just had two very different ideas of how to get there. So I'm making my case. And at one point Larry just leans back and he says in his very deep Larry voice, sold, sold. And like an idiot, I kept arguing. And Larry, to his infinite kindness, Larry let me finish. And then he leaned across the table and said, you don't understand. When I say sold, it means you've won. It means you can shut your mouth. Larry taught me a fantastic lesson that day. Once you have gotten what you need, shut up. Everything beyond that threatens to undo the victory that you just got. And victories in this business are few and far between. Oh yeah, the real estate tour. You guys know what the real estate tour is? It's fantastic. So there is nothing more boring than the real estate tour. And also no bigger sign than a designer is in over his head. Let me show you. This is the real estate tour. Let's say this is the site I'm presenting to a client. At the top left I put the logo. And then next to the logo we have main navigation. It says book, check in, manage. Next to that we have what we're calling utility navigation. That says deals, flying with us. And they'll go through this the entire length of the page and they will read every word of the page. And they will literally like zoom back and forth telling you what you can see in front of you. Never explain to a client what they can see in front of them. They can all see the logo in the top left. They can all see where the nav is. What they don't see is the why. You got to pull up. You do not sell a house by talking about sheetrock. You sell a house by convincing people that they're going to be moving to a good neighborhood. You sell it by showing them what the kids playground looks like. You sell it by scheduling the showing at the same time the really hot UPS guy comes by. You sell the benefits of the work. You sell how the work matches the project's goals. You sell how the new site is going to crush their competitors and make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. Let's try this again. Hey, so we did a little bit of research and it turns out most people come to your site to buy tickets. This is great because you make your money selling tickets. So we got rid of all the crap on your site that wasn't about tickets. And while every decision that you have made on that page should have been made with the benefit of data and the benefit of good research, people are irrational creatures and they do not make decisions based on data and research. Otherwise measles wouldn't be making a comeback. You clap at that. People make decisions based on stories. So find your story and tell your story. Mistake number six, not assigning roles. Everyone on your team going to the presentation has a role to play. Make sure they know it going in. Make sure everybody understands what's expected of them. If somebody's supposed to be taking notes, make sure that person's taking notes. If you're giving a presentation, you cannot take notes. If you're giving a presentation, you cannot keep time. Assign those roles to other people so that you can do your job to the best of your ability. And don't go in guessing that people know what their roles are. Make it explicit. Number seven, reading a script. Your job is to convince your client that you are so excited about the thing that you are showing them, that you cannot help it. Now we need to be honest about this. We're putting on a little bit of a show when you show our work. There's a little bit of theater involved here. There's a little smoke and mirrors. You are speaking to a group of people whose very livelihood could depend on what you're doing. The project you're working on could be the difference between them having a very nice job next week and having no job next week. You need to get these people excited. You need to keep them excited. And the best way to get people excited is to be excited yourself. People are great at modeling. Show some passion. You are telling them these things about their project because you are so excited about it. And that's contagious, just like measles. Let me introduce you to one of my design heroes, P.T. Barnum. P.T. Barnum was such a fantastic showman that he could get you excited about things that didn't even exist. He figured out what he wanted you to be excited about first and then he'd begrudgingly make the thing so that he could anchor the excitement to it. But it was never about the object itself. The object was just this stubborn thing that needed to exist. Luckily, you're already going into this presentation with something to be excited about. You already have that thing and make no qualms about it. You need to promote it. You are promoting your work. You are promoting yourself. But most of all, you are promoting the client's idea that this thing they're doing has legs. And you need them to stay excited about it. And you are helping to guide that to success. Because if you're not, then you run the risk of the client wondering if the idea is even good enough to be working on. And that's a conversation that should have happened a long time ago. The last thing you want going through the client's mind at this point is, holy shit, not even the people I'm paying to work on this project are excited about it. There's got to be a little barnum in your presentations. Not enough that it's a clown show, of course, but enough that you're building up to a crescendo. There is no difference between presenting design and trying to convince people to walk inside the dog-face boy tent. So have your facts straight. Have your homework done. Have your data. Know why you've made the choices you've made. Work all of these things around an exciting narrative that people can latch onto. And never, ever be afraid to be excited about what you're showing people. Getting defensive. I'm sure nobody here has ever experienced this. You are not your work. And your work is not you. Oh, did I forget to tell you to stand up? Yeah, stand up, come on. I am not my work. My work is not me. I am not my work. My work is not me. It is work product. It is not my personal expression. I am not a goddamn artist. I sit down now. Now that we've got all that down. You are not your work and your work is not you. It is not an extension of yourself. And it is not an extension of your personal expression. It is work product done to meet a client's goals. The client is free to criticize that work product. And to tell you whether they believe it has met those goals or not. You are free to disagree with them. And if you feel like the client is wrong, you should disagree with them. You are expected to make a rational case for those disagreements. You are not allowed to get all but hurt about it. This is a job. There is a difference between defending the work and getting defensive about the work. The latter is personal. It happens when you're seeing the criticism as a reflection of yourself. But what did we just learn? You out. So when your client starts critiquing your work, listen to what they are saying. Don't feel like you have to defend every decision that you've made there and then. Don't promise them anything then and there. Sometimes it is best to sit on it for a while. Now I'm not going to tell you this too often. I'm not going to tell you to keep your mouth shut too often. So believe me when I do. When a client is giving you feedback and you are starting to get testy about it, this is a fantastic time to keep your mouth shut. Just listen because any quick reply that you make is going to look defensive. Let them finish what they have to say and then reply with something like, that's interesting feedback. Let me get back to you about it after I've thought about it for a while. Mistake number nine. Oh man, mentioning typefaces. How designers love mentioning typefaces. Clients do not give a shit about typefaces. And if they do, they'll ask you. And you don't really want their opinion on this. So why the hell are you asking them? The thing I hear most from clients is I don't understand anything about design. They're wrong by the way, but that's for a different talk. This is their way of telling you they're uncomfortable. They are venturing into an arena that they don't know, they don't know what to do with. It's a mystery. They hate feeling uncomfortable, which is understandable because you do too. So the more that you dive into typefaces and grids and whatever else you're doing, the more that you bring up your tools of the trade, the more that it's looking like you're inviting them to do your job for you. And it's on you to make sure that you keep people in their comfort zone, which is their business needs, which is great. Because even if with all of the research that you've done, you are never going to be the business expert at the thing they do as they are. So you need them focused on that. So when presenting the work, talk about it in terms that relate to their business. Talk about how the decisions you made as the design expert match up to the goals of the project. Then the client can judge as the subject matters that they are in the thing that they know. But the color, the type, the design shit, you've got that. Stop bringing it up. And if you ask them for their opinion on design, don't go complaining when they actually give it to you. They told you they didn't know it. And this isn't really just about typefaces. This is about boundaries. The more you bring up the tools of your trade, the more that you're asking them for permission to use those tools. Keep your clients focused on the big picture. Keep them focused on the goals of the project. They're going to need your help in meeting those. But you don't need their help in doing the stuff that you know how to do. Mistake number 10, talk about how hard you worked. The worst feedback that you can ever get from a client. Wow, it looks like you worked really hard on this. If you do your work right, it looks like it took no time at all. It looks easy to use. It looks simple. It looks intuitive. And the client might be pissed off that they paid you for 50 hours of work and got something that looks like it took an hour. Which it did. What they're not seeing is the 49 hours that went before it. Now here's how designers usually handle that. Let me show you the 49 hours of bad work I did before I get to the one hour of good work, which makes them look defensive. And we're not going to be defensive. You just need to sell the hell out of that one good hour you did. Reacting to questions as change requests. Why is this blue? The client says, I can change it, the designer says. Why is the logo small? I can make it bigger. Where's my carousel? Oh, I can add it. I have seen this happen a thousand times. I've done it myself. Sometimes the client just has a question. Sometimes they're just looking for your reasoning. And when you reply to their very simple questions by offering to change the thing they're asking about, you're opening up a huge can of worms. What was just a question is now a problem. And if you're offering to change something just because they asked about it, well, maybe shouldn't they go back and review all of the other decisions that you've made? Mistake number 12, not guiding the feedback loop. There is only one question worse than what do you think. It's coming up. Ever hear a designer scream about a client giving them the wrong type of feedback? At which point I asked them if they told the client what kind of feedback they were looking for and they just pulled a panda hat over their head and get angry. Most clients have absolutely no idea what kind of feedback they should be giving you at any particular time. And there's no reason why they would. They don't do this every day. They don't have the training that you do. Nor do they need it because they hired you to take care of those things. So during the presentation, feel free to slap your hands together and say this is the kind of feedback that we're looking for today and give them some framing questions like this. Hey, how well does this reflect your brand? How well does this reflect your user's needs as we discussed in the research? How well does this reflect your ad strategy with which Apple just fucked? Keep the feedback questions about things that they understand. Keep them about things that are on their side of the table. Things that they are the experts in. They're going to give you the feedback on colors and fonts and all of that other stuff anyway, which you can feel free to do what you want with. This is the stuff that you need. This is the stuff that you can't move forward without. And they won't know to answer these unless you've appropriately guided the feedback loop, which brings us to the absolute worst mistake you can make during a presentation. Do you like it? I mean, do you like it like it? Do you really like it? If it had a like button, would you push it? You have just thrown away the farm, all of the work that your team did, all of the research, all of the interviews, everything just went down the drain. All of the great stuff wasted, all of the decisions that were made prior to this point. Mute, the client is no longer viewing you as an expert. You are no longer their equal in expertise. You are no longer the person that they feel comfortable enough writing a big check to. Even if you don't realize it, all of these things just happened. You are now reduced down to a small child showing your dad a picture of the cat and hoping he deems it worthy enough to put up on the fridge with his Magnetic Las Vegas bottle opener. Every decision on the project that was made with the benefit of expertise and data and research, and you just uttered the most subjective phrase that can come out of a human being's mouth. You just invited subjectivity into the room with open arms. Why? Why did you do it? Well, having done it myself, I can tell you why I've done it. Fear, because way down deep inside, we want them to like it. The lizard brain, the thing that keeps us alive, equates being liked with not being torn apart by savage tigers. We equate pleasing people with safety. And the client, for their part, is already feeling incredibly uncomfortable because they're being asked to judge design, which they might not ever had to do before. But if you've presented it right, you have described your decisions in a way that matches their organizational needs, and those they understand. But if you've done it wrong, you have asked them to look at your work the way that a designer would. You've asked them for feedback on grids, on colors, on type, on hierarchy. You have asked them for permission to make the decisions that they were paying you for. And then you throw a giant cherry on top of the whole thing. By asking them if they like it. And if they like it, everything is going to be okay. We will shake hands at the end of the meeting. We will exchange pleasantries. We will be friends. But no one hired you to be their friend, remember? The client did not hire you to make something they liked, and something they liked might not be the thing that leads to their success. And we, our professionals, service professionals, we get hired to solve problems. Problems that we have the unique skill set to solve. Problems that we have been trained how to solve. But the minute that we lose sight of our responsibility to solving problems is the minute that we actually stop solving them. The minute we ask for permission to do a job that we were already hired to do, we're no longer doing it. If you want to make your client happy, make them successful. Do the project right. Work with them so that both of you are using your expertise to the fullest. Respect that they are the expert at their thing and behave like you are the expert at yours. And trust me, I have never had a client come back to me and say, the site is doing well. We've increased revenue. We've grown market share and I've gotten a promotion. But I'm still pissed off. I didn't get that typeface I wanted. Because in the end it doesn't mean anything. It didn't really matter to them. What they wanted wasn't that particular typeface. It was success. And you may have to remind them of that a couple of times. That is in the job description. But Mike, why do you hate designers? Why are you always yelling at us? Why are you always taking the client's side in this shit? Nothing could be further from the truth. I love each and every one of you. Some of you a little more equally than others. But most of all, I really love this thing that we do. And I know that you love it too. And I want to help you keep doing it. Because your ability to practice this thing that we do depends on what happens in these presentations. Work you did not sell is no better than work you did not do. The thing we do is powerful. We can change people's lives with this stuff. Maybe not a lot all the time. Maybe a little bit here or there. But that counts. That matters. And what we do needs to be practiced with intent. With resolve. Sometimes with a few thrown elbows. Very few people can do what you do. Good design is a skill. And those who possess that skill have been called into service. And we have a responsibility to use that skill to the best of our ability. Because in the end, every fight that we throw, every fight that we're afraid to have, every argument that we put off to somebody else is a fight we pass on to the people that we have been entrusted to provide good design for. In the end, we are the gatekeepers to a better world. And that, I think that's worth fighting for. Thank you.