 Is it go time? Okay, go time. Okay, welcome everyone. So today we're gonna talk a little bit about building strong relationships with clients. My name's Hannah. I'm the Chief Operating Officer of the Brick Factory, which is a web development firm in Washington, D.C. So about a month ago, there was a digital marketing summit called MozCon in the States. And this stat really caught my attention. They said only around 7% of clients are satisfied with their web development firm. And I don't think that that is about the product that we're delivering to them. I don't think it's about your code quality. I think it's more about the relationships that we're building with our clients and how we relate to them. So that's what we're gonna talk about. So when I initially started planning this session, I made a giant list because that's what I do. I make giant lists of stuff. So I wrote down all the tips and tricks and tools that we use at our firm to manage clients. But then I realized the reason that we've been really successful in building strong relationships with our clients is a change in the way that we were thinking about it. The company I worked for was founded 25 years ago. So a lot of the team have been together for over a decade and that includes me. I've worked with the company for 16 years. I'm actually a little older than I look. Yeah, I haven't aged a day since I started. So it's great that we've worked together so long. We have a great rapport. We love each other. It's a very successful company. But we've built a lot of habits over time. There are a lot of things that we were doing simply because that's the way we'd always done them. And so a few years ago, we made a really concerted effort to rethink the way that we're approaching every part of our firm. And one area where this has had a huge impact is with the relationships that we have with clients. We decided to focus on a more, I would call it open humane approach to client management. And that's not only led to a much greater satisfaction from our clients, but it's also led to us feeling better about the work that we're doing with them. So I'm American, my firm's American, and many of our clients are American or Western European. So some of what works for us isn't gonna make sense for you and your clients, and that's fine. What I'd like you guys to take away from this is really the importance of being intentional about your decisions and about your approach to how you work. And to be open to breaking habits that might not be getting you to where you wanna be as a company. So we think there's three main values or principles that underlie positive relationships with clients, and that's honesty, generosity, and openness. So being honest, not lying to clients is a great start for a relationship, obviously, but in business, this tends to be more about transparency. So you wanna be forthright in all of your communications with your client, but really, when it comes to talking about price and process, this can make a huge difference. The second being generous, and this is with your knowledge and expertise. All of you guys are experts in the work that you do, and I know this. I've seen you blog, I've seen you mentor, I've seen you present at conferences like this one, and that's awesome, but your clients are a really important audience too. And so what I want you to do is share the knowledge and expertise that you have with them, educate them, that's the foundation of your value. The third principle is an openness, and this is to creative solutions. Conflict avoidance is very natural, I mean, it's uncomfortable, but trying to get past that pain point can lead to incremental thinking, where you're really just trying to do the fastest, easiest thing to move on with the work that you wanna do. And creative solutions do not need to be revolutionary, they don't need to be groundbreaking, it just needs to be thoughtful and considerate both of your clients and of your own internal team. So we're gonna focus quite a bit on conflict resolution because that is an important part of managing clients, but this really applies to any area where you're trying to solve a problem or just improve the outcome. So these are our three main values and then we're gonna talk about how to apply them in your everyday work. So being honest, this is principally about setting realistic expectations, and it applies to all facets of working with a client, but particularly in your process, your scope, deliverables, timeline, and also in your pricing. So price transparency, what is your client paying for? One way to be really clear about this is to use a cost breakdown instead of giving them one giant price for the whole project, explain how things are broken down, and not only does that help them focus their budget, if need be, but you're also educating them in the long term on how much web development costs. Another one is flagging areas that might seem overpriced to them, and this is when you initially come to them with the pricing, explain the why behind it in circumstances like where there are, there's a lot of foundational code required, so iceberg tasks, right, where the change looks really small, but it actually takes quite a bit of work, explain to them that that's required so they understand why your pricing is what it is. And some clients may not understand what's included in web development in the first place. They're picturing themselves, updating their WordPress blog, it all seems very quick to them. They may not understand that you need to manage environments, do code reviews, quality control, setting up environments, research, all of those tasks that go into being a web developer. And also any special circumstances that you have with your client, anything about their technology stack, their use cases that would drive the price up, explain to them where that time is coming from. And on the flip side, anything that seems underpriced, so with those iceberg tasks, once you've done that foundational code, sometimes the next iteration of that task is super fast. So if you don't explain the reasoning there, your client may think that you over-charge them in the first place. And sometimes you'll actually want to over-service the client. They may come to you and you're super excited about their mission, or it's an opportunity for you to use a new technology, or maybe you just think it's gonna look really good in your portfolio, letting them know that you're over-servicing them, saying, you know you guys, you have a $10,000 budget, we're gonna give you 20 grand worth of work because we think you're amazing, we wanna work with you. That way next time they come to you with $10,000, they're not gonna expect $20,000 worth of work and they'll appreciate the free work that you gave them. So price is often a very, very sensitive topic with clients, be as clear and transparent as you can. And also, frankly, if you're gonna have it out with your client over price, you wanna do that before you start working with them. So also with your process, this is about how you work, and it's often the first opportunity you have to educate your client on how web development works and how you work. So you wanna get that information to them as soon as you can in your proposal, in your initial pitch. Explain to them what phases are involved. Are there reviewer beta products? Explain to them what to expect there. Are there any tools that you're gonna use with them? Are you gonna ask them to review comps in a design app? Are you gonna use project management software with them? Will there be multiple code environments? Let the client know what to expect and explain any tools that might be new for them. Your scope, obviously a biggie. This is where you guys detail what you're gonna do for them. So you wanna include every single thing you can think of, but also document what's not included. In situations where you might have an existing product or site that's being migrated over, if anything's being left out, mention that. Anything that was included in the RFP or in your proposal, your initial talks that later becomes left out of the project, document that as well. And also any tasks that may not be clear which team is responsible, your client's team or yours. Make sure to get that in writing as well. With deliverables, you want to name and also describe them so the client knows what to expect from you. Certainly how many of each deliverable, so how many wireframes you're providing, how many rounds of edits to those, any review versions, and let your client know what their role is gonna be. Let them know what you expect from them. Are you going to be looking for approval, feedback from them, edits? How are they going to be involved in each of the deliverables that you'll be working on? Timelines. So this is an area where we've decided to be super upfront. If you read our proposals, it literally says this timeline will be thrown out. We have never managed to say nine months ahead of time when we're going to deploy a website. It just never happens. And so we tell them that. We say, guys, this is a tentative timeline. It gives you an idea of how big your site is, how long it's gonna take to build. It's an eight month build. It's a 12 month build. But we don't know what the actual deployment date is until we work with you a little bit. You know, until we get through the discovery process and see how it is working together and try to nail down a date. And your clients need deadlines too. Let them know that if they don't give you approval or feedback, whatever it is you need in a timely fashion, that's gonna push the rest of your deadlines as well. And those delays might not be symmetrical. Your client might miss a deadline by a week and you need three more weeks. You already have work booked in after them. Even if you don't need that time, even if they come to you, your team's wide open, you just knock that out, the expectation should be there. They need to know that once they miss a deadline, subsequent deadlines do become negotiable. So just talking about these things with them, just explaining how you work in your process helps bring up areas where your process and your client's process might be different or your process and your client's previous vendor's process. You know, it just brings up areas where you guys don't have the same expectations. It's a little story about being honest. We had a new client come to us and it was a really complicated interface, not this one. We spent a lot of time in the UX discovery process. You know, we had a lot of details to work out with them. We had really good talks. We felt like we were on the same page with them. So we were really surprised when we sent over the initial wires and this was their feedback. Can this site be in color? Can we have our logo on this site? And why can't I click on anything? I mean, this is clearly broken. And my team was like, we did not know what to say and the instinct here is to say, oh, the client is so stupid. They don't even know what a wireframe is. But it's our job to explain that to them. It's our job to set expectations and let them know how we're going to work together and what we need from them. Not only did we create a situation where the client was concerned, I mean, they thought we had sent them work that was broken, but it took us three weeks to even get them back on track. So we really needed to do a better job of setting expectations with them. So that we talked a little bit about being honest, being transparent, talking about your work process. Now we're gonna move on to the second value, which is generosity. Your clients don't know what you do. If they did, you would be unemployed. So having a true partnership with them means sharing your knowledge and expertise, break down what's technically involved in a way that they can understand. It helps them feel involved, but it also helps them make informed decisions. And at the end of the day, your clients have to make decisions about their projects. It's their project. But if they don't know what they're talking about, they can ruin their project and your life. It took us a long time to figure that out. We talked a little bit about giving them information about your workflow right up front, right when you engage with them. But you also want to reiterate some of that as you're working, as that information becomes relevant for them, because they might have been overwhelmed at the beginning. They might not have really understood it. And as you're going through the process becomes more real for them and that information will click a little better. It's really important, it's critical for your clients to see you as a professional. And it may seem a little bit counterintuitive, but a great way to do that is actually to explain your rationale. Give them context, give them the why behind your decisions. Let them know you're not being arbitrary, you're not making things up. You have the experience and the expertise to make good decisions for them. And talking to them about this also helps bring up situations where you actually did misunderstand the requirements. You also want to personalize your level of support. You may have a client who doesn't know what a wireframe is. You may have some who have been through this process before, but they're not very technical. And still others might be an expert in their own right at some part of the process. Developer on the weekends, ex designer, they may get it. So just make sure you're talking to them on their level. And save your clients for mistakes that you've seen other people make. I mean, if you've been in this business for any amount of time, you have made all sorts of mistakes. Use those scenarios to help your client internalize your guidance and put themselves in that situation. So another story here about sharing expertise and knowledge. So this is a site for a very long-term client. They worked with us for probably 10 or 12 years. They know everything about how we work and they're super involved. They give us tons of feedback. So we were doing a D6 to a D8 migration and it was a lot of work. There were thousands and thousands of nodes. We put all kinds of time into it. So after months of work, we sent over the beta and we could not believe the feedback from them. They said, where's the slider? Like we had on our old site. The font is too big. Can you make it like it is on the old site? There's too much rolling. Why can't we have the site look like the old one? And our team was like, what the hell? They had approved wires. They'd approved comps. They'd reviewed the sprints. They had seen everything over and over and over and over for months. We already did this. They already agreed to it. We have built a site. This is your site. You're gonna like it. So I mean, we just didn't even know what to do with these people. So we called them. We didn't have a way to call them and say, what is wrong with you guys? We called them and we said, you guys, listen. You know, we got rid of that slider because you have this super powerful hero image we're using and nobody was clicking past the first slide. We increased the font size to make it more readable and the scrolling is for different screen resolutions. Remember how we talked about that? And you know what they said? Okay. They said, sure, why not? As long as we explained the reasons we had made these decisions for them, it completely made sense to them that's all they wanted was the explanation. We launched the site. They're happy as can be and everybody wins. So that's a little bit. We talked about being honest with your clients, setting reasonable expectations. We talked about being generous and sharing your knowledge and now we're going to talk about the third area which is embracing creative solutions. So everyday life with your clients is about solving problems. That's really why they hired you. But you know, especially in an agency environment, if you're freelance, you have multiple clients and that, it can wear you down. You know, it can make you kind of look for the low hanging fruit of problem solving. You know, either agreeing with your client even though it's a bad idea or just shutting them down because you don't want to deal with it. To be a great client manager, you really need to be a little more deliberate. You know, take some time and look at the big picture before offering solutions and suggestions to them. And again, creative problem solving, this does not need to be mind blowing, guys. You just need to take a second and see if there's a better way to do things. And most of overarching problems that your clients are driven by some concern that they have, some fear that they have. So we're going to go over some specific scenarios where your client might be worried about something and some ways that you can mitigate that. So number one, if your client is worried, you're not gonna give them what they want. You know, you're not gonna give them what they expected. So the discovery intake process. There is a television show in the States called Design Star and it's like about to interior decorating, right? There's different teams of people, they're competing to like have their own TV show as interior decorators. So I saw this one episode and there was a married couple who was the client and there are three teams and they're competing to do the best job and win this client's approval. The first step was to interview the client. So each team got a chance to talk to the clients and at the end, the TV show went to the client, they said, how do you feel so far about the process? And the client said, we are so excited about team number two. We think they're gonna do an amazing job for us. They asked us all the right questions. They asked us how we're gonna use the space. They asked us about how we live, what our lifestyle is like, what our palette is. These guys are going to just blow it out of the water. And that really stuck with me because imagine for a second, your clients is already invested in your success and you haven't even done anything yet. They're already on board with you. They want, you've already won, really. So that's how important getting to know your client in a real way is before you start working with them. Another one's actually listening to them. I mean, don't assume that you know your clients business better than they do. You have to get information with them. So rephrase what they're saying to you. You know, let them be sure that you understood what they're telling you. And again, this is a good way to bring up areas where you actually didn't understand what they were asking for. Your specs and scope, improving documentation on projects is always gonna be a great place to reassure the client that you guys have the same idea of what the outcome should be. Visuals, this is really useful for clients who do not have a lot of web dev experience. If you show them something visual and give them an opportunity to react, that helps them have a reference point for a discussion with you that they might not otherwise be able to have. They might not have the vocabulary to talk to you about some of the things you're working on together. So this can be really useful. And then any system that lets your client review work as you go, even if you're not agile, just find a way to loop the client in. Find a way to let them be involved so that they can see your own track. So another one is the client's worried you're gonna ignore them. They're not gonna get the attention that they're looking for. Having a single point of contact, a client manager, or just somebody who's always there to respond to your client makes them feel like they have an advocate. Like there's somebody looking out for their interests on your team. And over-communicate. So the client has no idea what you're doing over at your office. So if you don't talk to them, they have no idea if things are on track. And sometimes even if it's not scheduled, interaction, giving a little one-minute, mid-deliverable status update and just letting them know things are going okay. And even if your client totally forgot you exist, you'll still win some points. So check-in's kind of according to the phase and the project, how often you need to be interacting with them. But also talk to your client and figure out if your idea of a normal amount of communication is the same idea as their normal amount of communication. And for larger projects, a status dashboard, hours burned down somewhere where your client can check-in and kind of see how things are going without maybe needing to talk to you about it every single time. And I mean, every client's concerned that either you're gonna deliver something that doesn't work or their site's gonna break under your watch. So talking to them about the technology behind it. Let them know you're on top of this. Talk to them about your hosting, your security, your monitoring, your view of an SLA, what your quality control process is. Let them know what you're doing to ensure that their project will work. And let them know how things get broken. Great ideas include plan deployments, updating your Drupal CMS, monitoring, and maybe not letting everybody at the client team have access to the site and be touching it all the time. Perception, this is making sure that your client knows how things are going to work. I mean, if you send over something, especially something complicated, if your client doesn't know what the functionality should be, they may feel that things are broken even if they're working as intended to make sure that they understand what it is you're delivering. And staging sites are also helpful for this somewhere where you can lock the code down, let the client review without seeing things in progress that they might feel are broken. If you offer bug fix as part of your product, let them know that ahead of time. Let them know that you're going to be handling that and they have seven days or 30 days or whatever it is to report bugs and have it be included in the scope of work. And the same with maintenance. If you offer retainers or maintenance contracts, let them know that when you first start working so that they know that you have the long-term interest of their project in mind. So this is really common when the client's concerned that you're gonna build them for overage that they didn't expect. And again, scope, you specs, this is the way to assure them that they are going to get the work they expect for the price that you guys agreed on. This is one that I see people, this is so important. So say this, do this, let the client know that if they're out of scope changes, you will get approval before you start working on them. So even when you have a contract in place that says we will build overage at whatever rate, even when the client comes to you and says, this is top priority, we need this done right away, we don't care what happens, just pick up a phone or send an email, just say guys, this is out of scope, I just wanna make sure you're aware of that, give it a nod. Even when you have that contract in place and even when the client said it is a matter of life and death, clients feel ambushed if you send them an invoice they didn't expect, so just take two seconds and let them know about it. And if locking down a budget is too risky, this is especially useful for troubleshooting, just ask for a few hours of research time, say we have no idea on earth how long this is gonna take, give us four hours, we'll look in or whatever it is, we'll look into it, we'll let you know, we'll come back with a better estimate or we'll come back and ask for another chunk of time. Another one is the client keeps coming to you with more and more out of scope work. And when that happens, when it starts snowballing, sometimes it's better just to lock down the current project and say, all right, we're gonna deal with the scope and the timeline we have right now, let's just roll all that stuff back, we'll do a phase two, we'll do a loopback list, we'll deal with that with a separate budget, separate timeline, worry about it later. So all right, you were honest with your client from the beginning, you said very reasonable expectations, you were generous, you shared your knowledge and expertise and you came to them with super creative solutions. No relationship is perfect and sometimes you still end up throwing down with them. So we wanna apply the same three principles, honesty, generosity and openness to managing your clients' relationships even when things are not going well. So of course, be honest, just tell them there's a problem and especially if it's your side, especially if you've done something, jump in front of bad news, let them know what the problem is and if you can't come up with a solution, tell them how you're gonna fix it. Give your clients an opportunity to be understanding. I mean, clients in most cases are humans too and a lot of times they'll be perfectly fine with whatever the problem is and it's not that big of a deal. And also, if you're working and things are going but you just feel like there's a bit of tension, like things aren't going smoothly between you, sometimes just bringing that up and saying, hey, I feel like we're not seeing eye to eye on whatever issue, sometimes taking a moment to sort of get over that pain point makes the rest of the process a lot smoother. And if you have a conflict with a client, this is the perfect time to use your problem-solving skills. If you can't or won't do what the client asks of you, take the time to explain the underlying issues. Let them know why you can't do it. Timelines is a really common one here. We have a lot of clients come to us and say, hey, can you redesign our sci-fi next week? And we're like, no, no, we can't. But instead of just saying it's not humanly possible, we say, well, why do you want one? Do you actually need the redesigners? Is there some other way we can solve your actual problem? Maybe a landing page or a micro launch a campaign, what is the problem your client's actually trying to solve there? And in some cases, you may need to reframe the entire relationship with them. So some clients are negative, and frankly, sometimes they're downright abusive. And in those situations, you need to think about whether it is worth the mental health of your team to continue working with them. And that may mean continuing the project you're working on now and not taking any additional work from them. It may mean exercising the exit clause of your contracts. But not every client is for you, and that's okay. And on the flip side of that, sometimes you need to know when to let it go. So think about how the conflict will affect the relationship with the client. Who is the client to you? Sometimes even when you know you're right, you just need to let things go. So being honest, being generous, and being open, whether you're getting to know the client for the first time, or you're working through an already troubled relationship, be as honest, clear, and transparent as you can to set reasonable expectations with them. Treat the client as a partner by sharing your knowledge and expertise about the work that you're doing together with them. And both with everyday challenges and in times of conflict, take a moment and just be open to solutions where you and the client end up happy. And everyone wins. Thank you so much for coming. We have some time for Q&A, but the fact of the matter is I don't know everything. So I would like you guys to also offer advice or your suggestions, your past experiences to your colleagues who have issues that they wanna talk about. And this is me, you guys can tweet me, email me, call me, any time to talk about the presentation or life in general, I'll leave this up here. So does anybody have a client scenario that they wanna talk about with this guy? And just before you start there, that's a bit loud, for the questions, I'll just bring the mic around, leave, just wait until I bring the mic and just hold on to the mic until you've finished the question or any follow-ups. So I'll come on. Do what he says. Just what you were talking about, overages and the scenario you gave of the client calling up, like they wanted urgently, that kind of thing. I was just wondering, in that scenario, do you estimate your overages to a degree possible or do you just kinda say it's gonna be, we're gonna spend X hours on it? It depends on what they're asking for. Like if we have any idea how long it's gonna take, you should probably ask Pam about that, quite frankly. She's like the expert. Oh, did he not like your answer or did you tell him no? He doesn't like no. I'm just getting overages from everybody. It really depends on what it is. I mean, if we do know how long it's going to take, then we'll give them an estimate or a ballpark. If we don't, we'll tell them, like I said, we need research time to look into it or I mean, depending, sometimes we go hourly. We're like, we have no idea, we'll just start, we'll update you as we go. It just depends on the task. Oh, you have to wait, you have to wait, you're in trouble. Oh. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Great point. I, when I was working as a client liaison manager, had a peculiar situation where the business was like, you're talking to the client too much and the client was like, we love that you talk to us all the time. So it's getting that balance right between, you know, when you're billing on a time basis and the client is very, well, I don't want to say this word, but I'm going to needy and needs to be talked to, how do you resolve that kind of natural tension? We build the clients for the time we take to talk to them. I mean, so we just do, yeah. And we had a client who actually didn't like that. This is the first time's ever, so I've done this for 16 years, this first time's ever happened to me. A client called and said, why is there a charge for a meeting? And I was like, well, I have to pay the person who talked to you. You know? I mean, but that's, you have to, because that person needs to be paid for that time. So somebody needs to pay for it. So. Yes, thank you. There you go. Just interested in that, you talk about price transparency. So not really knowing how much until you actually understand the client's needs and requirements, how do you give them a price or a ballpark figure so they can go away and sell it to their own organization to then start to get you on board? So we do do that. We give, I mean, depending on how much information we got in the RFP, we can be more or less specific. Sometimes we give a range. I mean, sometimes we give a big range too. And it's somewhere in the middle of it. Yeah. Or maybe we're way off. But, I mean, depending on, you know, how much information we have, we give them a price. And that, what I was talking about more was the timeline, like how long it would take because in our experience, we're pretty good. I mean, even I haven't been a developer in a long time, but I can eyeball a site and tell you pretty much what it's gonna cost to make another version of that sucker, you know, more or less. And, but I don't know how long it's gonna take because I don't know how long the client is going to take. And that is such a big part of a timeline that we just, we just can't commit to it. We can't commit, we're not committers, we're just not. I know, sorry, let's get it here now. Just in the front here. I just wanna know if you've ever been in a situation where the mistake might be on your end and you're still trying to achieve transparency with the client, but you can't outright say to them, hey, the developer completely missed the brief and I'm still trying to deliver this to you and make it work. Have you ever had to work through a situation like that? So depending on, yeah, like yesterday. So depending on our relationship with the client, sometimes we are that honest with them. You know, we're like, we messed this up. I mean, we straight up did not do what we were supposed to do or I mean, whatever it is, we just tell them. If it's somebody who we don't know well or maybe they don't handle negative news as well, we may try to gloss over it a little bit and say, you know, we've had some technical issue or I don't know what, but for the most part, we're really transparent and like I said, I'm American, your mileage may vary, but it works really well for us. I mean, we just tell people what we're, and we try to be good people, I think is what matters here is we are not trying to get over on our clients, we love them, we want to do good work for them and so we care, we're real with them and I think that goes a long way. They trust us and we're telling them the truth and so when we make a little mistake or even a big mistake, we still have that relationship to fall back on. What, what? Just to the point that if you have a developer who completely missed the brief, if you have enough touch points with them, hopefully you can like nip that in the bud before it becomes a two-week project delay, like you may have lost a day or two ideally, but you're not having developers, you know, spend two weeks on their own with nobody seeing what they're doing, then coming back with the complete wrong thing, like I'd say the way we would deal with that is try to avoid it happening in the first place. Are there posts? Yeah. You had a stat at the beginning around client satisfaction at 7%. That's four-fine, right? What? So does your business or your team use client satisfaction from an anecdotally or are you using a tool to actually measure? We do surveys. Yeah, we actually ask them. Are they customized surveys or are you using a specific tool? You mean to actually send it? Yeah. I have no idea what they use. I mean, they send it in an email, I don't know. I mean, there's nothing special about it. Like we just adjust the questions based on where we are and working with that client and how long the client's been with us and just ask them questions about how they feel. I mean, I think that even helps. Like they like giving feedback. They like telling us what they think, you know, because it means they're gonna get better service. One of the... Oh, goodness. Sorry, one of the challenges that I haven't figured out how to resolve is the tricky question around assumptions that you think you're all on the same page and then you finish the work and they go, but why doesn't it do all these other things or these other sites do all those other things? Yeah, that's the specs, scope of work, having the discovery process, talking to them, looping them into the review. I mean, that's all over the place. I mean, everything we do is engineered to prevent that from happening. So, and I mean, you saw that project I was talking about the big one, that was recently. And we've worked with those people for 10 years. So, and they still had assumptions. So, yeah, do what you can. So you're talking about wireframes and making sure the client knows the process, but what would you do in the situation where rather than you presenting a design to the client, they actually say, hey, this is the design we want. What would you do then? I laugh because the head of our creative department jumps out the window. I mean, that happens occasionally. If it is reasonable, we do it. I mean, we may give feedback and say, hey, we disagree with some elements of this, this is why, but I mean, if they have a design and they are happy with it and it is within the realm of possibility, then we will, you know, spec it out and build it for them and there are some ugly sites on the internet and we're not responsible for them. Clients give us designs. And what we usually do is estimate building their design and then estimate something else that we could do that's similar, but not exactly the same and they almost always take the cheaper one, which is not their design because they designed with, you know, fantasy in mind. So we always try to say like, yeah, this is fine, but it's gonna cost 50 grand. And if we can compromise on these 20 things, we can do it for 20. And they're like, we'll definitely do it for 20. So the things that sometimes we get are actually already existing components. So they've matched like, I don't know, eight or so components that we allow them to use all together on the one page. So I guess it's more about content than I think it's all relevant. Hannah, you said at the beginning that these principles all basically came out of a culture change in your agency. I'm just curious about what it was that made you realize you needed to change? We changed ownership. Oh, okay. Yeah, so. And what kind of process, also what kind of process you went through to develop the. Sorry, say again? What kind of process you went through and to, I guess, embed that culture change in? So I mean, I think this is a pretty unusual situation that we're in. The owners of our company sold it to the head of our client services team. So that was significant, obviously, because we just, it was a new company. Like I said, we'd work together forever. So we all had these habits that we'd picked up at the old firm. And then I, I mean, as they call the credit here, but I did become the chief operating officer and I said, why are we doing all of this stuff? And so it literally became my job to look at every single thing we do and say, why are we doing this? Is there a better way? Who are we making happy here? And really make sure that our organization, that our company is designed around the teams that work with us. So the development team makes sense for developers. The design team makes sense for designers. You know, we do things that make our, make our employees happy. So that is, that was our focus. Five years. Hi, thanks very much. We work more on the client side. Sorry, where are the client, I mean. Okay, cool. So lots of your processes and stuff gives insight to what you would actually need as a professional services provider. But is there anything stand out that you, as an issue or that you would prefer clients to be doing that would actually help build your, work better for you? All of the stuff that I mentioned. Interest. Communicate. No, but it's, it works both ways. I mean, be honest. Tell them what you actually want. Tell them what you're trying to accomplish. When you're uncomfortable, they're not doing what you want. Let them know that. Just, just tell them. Tell them what it is you need. And if you put that out there, even if they disagree with you, it gives them an opportunity to propose a solution to you. Excellent, thanks. Any more questions? Put your hand up, please. Yep, one in front. Or suggestions. I'll take also advice on anything I left out. I'm just saying. I think to that, those last comments about getting from the client what they want, what they need, we often find, and the one earlier about the assumptions at the end of the project, oh, we thought it was going to, and hey, that never came up. I think the discovery that you spoke about is so super important, but what's really important as well is the client knowing what they want. So we've dealt with an agency one time. They wanted a progress bar on a form. And it's like, okay, how do you want the progress bar displayed? Oh, maybe in a percent, or maybe days. We're not sure. You can do it, it's like, oh no, you need to tell us what you want, and we shall do that for you. Whilst your requirements remain a bit, oh, this, maybe that, when it gets delivered at the end. Oh. Yeah. So that's what we do. That's an excellent point. So first of all, I just want to validate everything that you just said. So I'm going to do- Oh, I love it, go. A digital producer at an agency over in Perth. And we do a lot of the things that you say, so that's really good to hear. I just want to touch on some of the few things that people will talk about. So some of the, when stuff goes wrong, we have that sometimes, obviously not all the time, but sometimes. And one of the things that we found that works best is to not just say, oh, we messed up. It's to actually say, oh, we messed up, and here's how we're going to fix it. If you just go up to someone and say, oh, we messed up, and they're like, okay, what are you going to do? We're like, I don't know, we'll sort it out. You have to go there with a plan, and that's one of the big things that we found is just to say, okay, we admit we've done something wrong, maybe you didn't communicate well, and to also have that transparency that maybe the other party may have something to do to be better in the future. So that's one of the things that we do just to. Absolutely. And that actually is our number one rule for our employees is I do not want to hear about the mistake you made. I want to hear about how you're going to fix it. So, yeah, all around. All right, we've got time for about one more question, so anyone would like to have a crack? Or compliments. I've got, sorry, I have one question. Yeah. How many clients have you ditched in the last five years and did you get any satisfaction from any of those? No, it's always, we always feel bad, we really do. So, I can think of two that we got rid of because they were not nice. And then other ones that we've, I mean, probably a handful that we've gotten rid of just because the work didn't make sense for us, like we didn't enjoy their work process, it didn't make sense for us, or it was just something that wasn't working. But we, even for the nasty people, we feel bad about it. I mean, we form relationships with these people, we enjoy doing work for them, people get emotionally invested in it, and we hate that, but it has to be done. We've had two clients that were just not treating our employees the way that they deserve. So. Fantastic. All right, two last things. First of all, big round of applause again for her. Yes, you guys! Just keep in mind that all these talks are being recorded, so you'll be able to find links to those on the website. I think about a week's time that Vladimir will be putting up all these talks. So if you wanna share this talk with any of your colleagues, please do so, or if you wanna recap. So just before we go, one last announcement from Murray. Okay, thanks, Ian. Okay, guys, it's time for lunch now. Lunch is gonna be served just outside, and to this point, most of us have been congregating in that place, but there is lots of other places we can go. The best one would be the terrace. So if we just go out this door here and turn left, you can make your way out to an outdoor terrace, and you can enjoy your lunch there. It's much better than just crowding around in here. So thank you very much, and thank you guys for coming. I appreciate it.