Stop being selfish and start asking more questions

E41 Well, that’s a terrible idea: How to lead clients into making well-informed, future focused decisions.

Leanne Woff: ​ [00:00:00] Hey, hey, hey, lovely. Today’s episode is all about terrible ideas. [00:01:00] No, it’s not really, but it’s called, well, that’s a terrible idea: how to lead clients into making well informed, future focused decisions. Let me tell you a little story. I know you love stories.

My team and I have been working with some clients and there’s this phenomenon that we see. And it happens all the time, really. And it’s a bit of a flip flop. And I want to dive in with you to look at why this flip flop happens. What’s with the wobble? My team and I spend a lot of time overhauling systems, processes, creating more efficient ways to do things, thinking outside of the box, extrapolating things out and then pulling them all back into a condensed machine way of operating.

And when we’re looking at overhauling [00:02:00] anything in a business, that means change. And can I tell you, humans don’t like change. Generally, that’s the way it goes, because it feels uncomfortable and it tells us that we’re not safe. So we’re working with the client. We’ve improved one of their core systems in their business.

We’ve presented it. We’ve walked them through in detail and they have raved. On the call, they’re saying this is amazing. We’ve never seen anything like it. How cool is this? Fantastic. So from this point, usually we would go on to then integrate that system into the business. Get the team to know what the new way of working is or what the new process is, make sure they’re confident and keep this business growing.

 But, a few days later, the client comes back. We’re not feeling [00:03:00] confident and excited anymore, team. We’ve had a bit of a wobble, and now we’re a little bit worried about all these new things, this new way of doing it.

We had two options. The first is to go, not a problem. That’s totally okay. We’ll just change it all back. No harm done. We’re here to help you. And if you’re not comfy, we’re in your corner. Or there’s option two. And that is, let’s think about what’s really going on here and lead. In one way, we’re operating in a manner that is of service and support and considering the safety of our clients and the way they’re feeling and protecting that.

The [00:04:00] second is leading and trying to understand. at a higher level what’s really going on. Because there was a reason we decided to change things, and that reason would have been valid and important or we wouldn’t have made the choice to go down this pathway of change. So is it really fair on our clients if when they have a little bit of a wobble for whatever reason, we just say, yep, no worries, if that’s what you want to do, cool, cool. I don’t think it is, because they’re not seeing it clearly right now. At one point they were, at one point they saw that something needed to change. And whatever drove that was big enough for them to [00:05:00] go, even though I don’t like change or this might look different, I’m happy to do it. But in the moment then we’ve done a wobble. We need to be able to reflect that back. And we need to be able to help them explore this.

That’s your job. You are being of service when you’re able to bring the outcome back to the forefront of the conversation and say, Hey, I recognise that this might not be easy, or I recognise that previously we really wanted to change this so that we could achieve X, but now we seem to be saying something different.

Is there a reason we’ve changed our thought process? And open a conversation to talk about it and make sure we’re [00:06:00] still working towards our goals. Regardless of how we feel right now, we need to look at the bigger picture and re-evaluate if it’s worth listening to this feeling or rationalising that feeling.

So I’m going to explain how you can do this. The first step is to dig deeper, and you’ll hear me say this all the time. Dig deeper, always. Get as much information as you can. People don’t just change their minds with no thought process or no incident that’s happened. If we have gone from, woohoo, this is awesome, to, oh, this is a real bad idea, or I want to run away, or I’m scared now. Something has happened and it can just be I’ve taken time to think about it and here’s all the thoughts that came up [00:07:00] or it can be I’ve noticed something else or someone else has asked me a question or I’m just having a really rough day, something has happened and usually if it is causing us to lean towards safety and not make a logical choice or a growth decision and it’s pushing us towards a poorer choice or a less efficient or effective choice.

One of two things are at play. One is fear. We are worried about something and we’re worried about what that something might lead us to. If we do it this way and someone else stuffs it up, is my business going to go down in flames? I’m scared. If I let someone else do it, they’re not [00:08:00] going to do it the same way as me and then my business is going to go down in flames.

If something is posted at the wrong time, It’s going to damage my brand and my reputation and my business is going to go down in flames. We start all of these little cycles in our brain that lead to something big and scary. And if we’re feeling that, more often than not, we’re not rationalising it. We’re feeling it, we’re trying to find a quick solution to fix it, and we’re moving forward.

And where there’s not fear, there’s lack of knowledge. We can come up with brilliant ideas, solutions, abstract thoughts, innovative ways to do something as OBMs. But sometimes we miss filling in our clients on why we [00:09:00] made that decision and what that looks like for them. And so they walk away and then they start to think about all the what-if scenarios.

Or the, no, we’ve always done it this way. Why should we change that? Why? I’m confident with the way we’ve done it. I can get in myself and I can do it. I know what that looks like. It feels safe. It feels familiar. So why would we change it? You’re an OBM. If you’ve made decisions, Or you’re suggesting a different way to do something, there’s a reason behind that.

I know that. And we need to help our clients understand the reasoning. To do that, we need to give them the opportunity to voice their thoughts. So that we can answer them just as they need them. The things that pop up and they think and feel. We need to support them through that. So as part of all of this, we’re trying to [00:10:00] work out where the wobble happened, and you need to be able to open a conversation and have the discussion to find that out so you can help fix it.

When you’re doing this, you need to tread carefully. Be gentle and be tactful with the aim of acknowledging the elephant in the room, the emotion. This is the bit that we shy away from. We don’t explain to our clients, Hey, you might be thinking or feeling this way, or we’re going to do this. And this is what a lot of my clients experience when I’m doing it.

And that’s normal. Hey, are you making this decision because you’re worried about something? Because what it looks like to me is that we might be feeling unsure, or we might be forgetting why [00:11:00] we wanted to change this in the first place. Acknowledge the emotions, name them, normalise them, bring them into the conversation.

We’re making the big scary things less scary.

All with the aim of getting our clients the impact and outcome that they really want. And our role isn’t always practical. It’s not always to come up with the solution that is a process. It’s to help them make choices that will lead to the outcome and impact they want. It’s helping them see their thought process And assisting them on finding a way that feels easier.

That’s part of our job.

And remember, no one likes getting [00:12:00] told their idea isn’t any good. So we don’t ever want to do that. What we want to do is explore the reasoning for why we would do it that way or not do it. There are always 14 different ways to do something. And sometimes the only difference is preference, and that’s okay.

But, when the difference is efficiency, or effectiveness, or it’s going to mean different results, we need to get comfortable with discussing options, in a non threatening manner.

As you wear your tact, you need to listen to what your clients are saying, understand what’s happening underneath, and what the driving thoughts and feelings are for what you’re looking at, and then consider what options you have. What options [00:13:00] can you see and present them? Carefully think about each of the options that have been discussed.

And then talk to your client about the pros of each one and the cons of each one. What could the positive impact of doing it this way be? What does it mean? And that could be I’m used to doing it that way, so it’s easy. There’s no learning curve. Awesome. And what could the possible consequence be?

I’m going to stay where I’ve always been. Because if I keep doing the same thing, nothing’s going to grow. I’m going to get the same result. Okay. And what if we look at a different option? One of the cons is I don’t know how that plays out. I’ve not done it before. I can’t see how it would work. And then one of the pros could be, it means that we’re going to [00:14:00] be able to achieve our goal faster because the process is more streamlined and it’s going to save us an hour every time we do it.

We’re building the reasons why we should take this step of bravery and we’re looking at it from a point that includes our thoughts and feelings and how easy it is for us to adopt new ideas or how hard. Then we get to make a decision that does cover all the parameters. We’re helping frame things in a way that goes back to the outcome our clients want, but considers the journey of getting there and lays it out in an easy to discuss manner. So once you’ve done that, you’ve put out all the options on the table. [00:15:00] We’ve got really good discussions. I want you to tackle your own alarm.

If you feel strongly about something, a certain way to do something, whether or not we should choose path A or path B, there’s a reason for that. And you need to know what the reason is. So if you’re having a reaction that says, no, no, no, we can’t go back to what we were doing, or no, please don’t pick that way.

We need to pick the other way. You need to work that out within you and you need to think about, okay, why is it? My guess is because you’re invested and that means you care about the outcome. So your knowledge that you’ve got, your experience that you’ve had. We’ll kick in and say, no, that’s a bad idea.

That’s a bad idea. We can’t do that. That’s going to ruin [00:16:00] everything, but it doesn’t kick in and say why. So we need to dig into that a little bit more. And then we need to explain that to our clients. I’m really invested in the results that you’re going to get. And I’m concerned that if we do it the way we’ve done it before, these are the things we’re going to experience.

You’re going to end up burnt out again. You’re going to have too much to do. You’re not going to be able to launch the new thing that you want to launch. And that’s all you’ve talked about for six months. And we’re jeopardising it because we don’t want to change. Be honest and be truthful. Explain why it matters and why it matters to you and why you’re even bringing it up.

Then make your recommendation or suggest a new [00:17:00] pathway. You might go back to what you’d already planned or you might say, based on this conversation, maybe we could do it this way and come up with a whole new approach. But you have to set the scene first. You have to give them the opportunity to think and you have to show your reasoning and your investment in a way that’s not scary and that’s honest.

Then you want to reinforce a collaborative approach. To do that, you go back to your client and you say, based on this conversation, what do you feel more comfortable with? What are you happy to do? Do you want to go this way or do you want to go this way? Or, do you want to have another chat in a few days, once you’ve processed a bit more, and see what we can come up with [00:18:00] together.

We’re giving them options that aren’t by default to go back to the way that things have always been. We’re giving them opportunities to create safety with knowledge. Plans that will help them grow at the same time. And then the final thing is you need to be happy and content no matter what the outcome is.

When we’re dealing with anything that is big and scary as people, we need to be ready to take the steps to change them. And sometimes even if we understand the logic, we’re still too scared to do it. And if we’re not in that right place, That’s okay. If now is not the time, that’s okay. We can do our best to help our clients through this and we can give them a glimpse [00:19:00] into the mindset and the emotions and how other people have tackled those things.

But if they’re not ready to take on a new way or try a new thing, It’s not going to work anyway. They have to be on board. And so if they choose, No, I need to go back to the way I’ve been doing it. That’s what makes sense for me. It’s okay. No worries. And then we park it, and we look at it again in a few months time.

That’s your job. It needs to be done in the right way, and in the right time. And it’s okay. It’s okay to not need to catapult forwards all the time. It’s doing the right things in the right timing. And so you need to be secure enough to know that it wasn’t your approach that was wrong [00:20:00] and it wasn’t their idea that was wrong.

We’re dealing with people and emotions and big, scary things, especially when there’s change. And it’s okay. It’s not one idea is good and one is bad, but we do need to do the journey with our clients. And we need to support them, even if it goes against what we think. As long as we’ve voiced our concern, we’ve given them options, we’ve done everything that we can to positively support them, you’ve done your job.

Your job isn’t to fully overwhelm them or intimidate them. Be in their corner and be okay with that. So I hope that this has given you a little bit of a framework to work towards when you’re dealing with clients who are trying to make choices. And sometimes they’re a bit wobbly or they’re making what you just think is [00:21:00] the wrong one.

And especially if you’ve got that alarm going off in you that’s saying, this is a bad idea. We’re going to go back to square one. This framework is how you can tackle it with your clients. Generally, you get a pretty amazing outcome from it. I hope you found this helpful. Don’t forget, leave me a five star review if you enjoyed this episode.

Send me a DM and tell me if you’ve experienced situations like this. Tell me how you’ve handled it. I’d love to know. I’ll see you next week guys. [00:22:00] 

E33 Introvert, Extrovert or Ambivert: People are still your secret weapon to business success

Leanne Woff: ​ [00:00:00] 

Hey, hey, hey there. Welcome to today’s episode of the Audacious OBM. Today we’re [00:01:00] going to talk about introvert, extrovert, or ambivert. People are still your secret weapon to business success. Now you might be thinking, Leanne, where the heck did you pull this from? But this actually came from, I was thinking about it a couple of weeks ago.

And in this process, I was talking to some members in OBM Academy and Audacious OBMs and giving them advice about different things and how they can approach different situations. And I just like the little community that we’ve really built there. And I thought if you isolate yourself in any way, you would miss that and you’re missing some big resources.

And I think sometimes we go into a little box where we go, Oh I’m an extrovert, so I find this easy. I’m an ambivert, so I can do [00:02:00] both. Or I’m an introvert, so I find it way too hard. But connecting with people happens in all different ways and you can do it in ways that suits you. So you can still get the support that you need in your business.

And so that’s what I want to talk about today. Now specifically on the Introvert level, there is an amazing human. Her name is Hayley Maxwell and she’s the unstoppable introvert. She’s incredible. If you’re an introvert, look her up. She gives you all different tactics on how to do business as an introvert in a way that’s not going to push you out of your comfort zone too much, or try and be someone you’re not so awesome resource if you need that, but getting back to the point of this episode.

It is , don’t be arrogant. You don’t know everything. And [00:03:00] business, just like life, is totally unpredictable. And so when we recognize those things, I don’t know everything. And something that I don’t expect will happen. We can start putting in place the things that we need to be able to manage these things.

How do I get the knowledge? What do I do when the unpredictable thing happens? If you don’t have a pre plan, it makes it a lot harder. And that’s when we spiral. So I’m going to talk about the nine different things. Nine different kinds of help people can give you in your OBM or Virtual Assistant business.

Okay, so the first one is the Small Business Coaster Help. So if you’ve been running a small business, you know it goes up and it goes down. And sometimes you need a person or a group of people where you can say, Hey, this is going on. [00:04:00] I’m panicking. I feel stuck. Or I feel like something bad just happened and I feel really quite sad or like I’m failing or this really awesome thing happened.

And then this really bad thing happened and now my head is just spinning. Small Business Coaster Help is all about having the people that you can go to who can go, nah, it’s okay. It’s just the up and down. Or, yeah, I’m actually seeing that everywhere in the market right now. So it’s not just you. And that gives you the ability to go, Oh, all right, cool.

Little bit of perspective. I’m not rowing this boat on my own. The second one is expert knowledge help. I have different people who I’ve got quite strong relationships with. And even students in my academy. I know that if I have a Dubsado question. I’m going to go and talk to Sophie Carr. I’m going to talk to Robin.

Because they know Dubsado so much [00:05:00] better than me. And that’s amazing. But I have connections with different people so that if I’m in a situation where it’s like, I really need the answer to this question, or I need someone I can refer to for this because it’s out of what I know right now, these are the people I will go to.

And so that’s the expert knowledge help. Having the people you can reach out to based on different things. And people who are quite happy for you to check in and do that. You don’t have to have a 45 minute leading conversation. They’re people who are in your community. So they’re quite happy to get the, Hey, can you just let me know blah, blah, blah.

And it goes both ways. They’re Celebration Help. We’re in small business and a lot of the time we have little wins and we have big wins and we have no one to look over at and go, Hey, this happened, or nobody else to see what’s happened and go, Hey, do you know that that’s actually awesome? So that you can appreciate the work that you’ve put in. A [00:06:00] lot of the time we need the Celebration Help. We need a person or a few people who can go, Hey, this is amazing. This is actually happening. Look at what’s been going on for you. And then there is In Case Of Emergency Help. So if something big happens, if something breaks that you built and you’re panicking, you don’t know what to do, you need to have some people you can go to and go, help, I don’t know what’s going on.

This thing’s broken. I don’t know what to do about it. Or, hey I’ve gotta rush my dog to the vet and that’s gonna sound really silly to some people. And I have these jobs I need to do. I need somebody who can help me and have your core people who will jump in and go, yeah, cool, we’ve got this.

You go and we will, keep the ship floating. So you need, In Case Of Emergency Help, these are all the things that keep small business doable.

Then there’s Imposter Extraction Help. So we [00:07:00] all face imposter syndrome. We all struggle with the, uh, I’m not good enough, or. Maybe I don’t know enough or I’m not doing it right or, I should be further along than I am. I’m not getting any clients. Is that because of me and maybe I should just give up?

All of that is imposter syndrome and sometimes all we need is somebody else to look at us and go, No, none of that is true and pull out the imposter and extract them from our thinking. So that we can see clearly and we can move forward and we can keep building. Then there’s laughing and perspective help.

Sometimes, terrible things happen and we get quite stressed or someone says something nasty or someone reacts to a situation in one way and you think, Did I handle this completely wrong? Or, what is going on here? You start to feel really uncomfortable and worried and you don’t realise until you have someone else to tell, and then [00:08:00] their reaction says it all.

They’ll start laughing and go, that person is hilarious. I cannot believe they’re behaving that way. Or to give perspective to what is happening. And it changes your whole view on the situation. And sometimes we need that. Sometimes we need the ability to offload the worry and the panic so that we can see clearly and move on as professionals.

Competition Help. You can be in competition or you can be in community. And I know some of my competitors are my best friends in business. We do very similar things. We help each other. And we choose to be community. There is enough work that goes around. And sometimes we sit there and we worry about people who could be our competition.

And sometimes we need the people who are in our corner to go, Well, are they your competition though? Do they really talk to the same people that you do? Do they speak the same way you do? Have they [00:09:00] experienced the same things you have? Because if not, they’re not really your competition and it’s okay. And then again, we can walk through lighter.

Then, second last one is Accountability Help. We live in shiny object syndrome land. That is our world now. You walk into a supermarket and there’s all different things flashing at you saying, buy me, buy me, do this, do that. And sometimes we need help to focus. And we need that in a safe space. That is what people give us.

Sharing where you want to go and how you plan to get there with somebody else. And so then they can come back and go, Hey, how’d you go with this thing? So that you can keep following to get the results that you’re after. And then the final one is the I’m Scared Of Driving Help. Now, this is very specific to me.

A few years ago, I met in person someone I’d been talking to online and was in online communities. [00:10:00] And we live close to each other. And we both wanted to go to events that were in the city. Which is, a solid hour drive from us and it’s city driving. So it’s different to suburb driving. And we were both like, Oh, yeah, I ain’t driving like that.

It’s so much pressure. And then we worked that out. And so it was like, okay, so now I have a driving buddy. And now every time it’s like, I want to go here. Do you want to come so that we’ve got this driving buddy. And then one of us will drive and the other will sit there and it becomes fun and it becomes a lot easier and there’s somebody else to help us navigate the scary driving in the city.

But you won’t ever get that if you don’t talk to people and you don’t build real relationships. And so that is the whole point of this episode. It’s that, find your people, people who do what you do similar to what you do, in a way that you do it, in an online land, however it works. Because no matter the kind of [00:11:00] person you are, the people are the secret weapon to building business success.

I do not doubt that for a second. And so I hope that that helps you and gives you a new perspective. I would love to have you in my community. We’ve got lots of free resources. We’ve got a thriving OBM challenge. We’ve got a six figure OBM roadmap you can grab. We’ve got OBM Academy where you can learn to be a wildly profitable OBM.

There’s this podcast, leave a comment, leave a review if you’re liking what you’re hearing and DM me. I would love, love, love to hear from you. I’m Leanne Woff. I’ll see you, I’ll see you next week, guys. Bye!

​ [00:12:00] 

E29 How to deal with angry clients 

Leanne Woff: ​ [00:00:00] Hey, hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Audacious [00:01:00] OBM. I’m your host, Leanne Woff, and today we are digging in to how to deal with angry clients. Doh, doh, doh. Okay, so I’ve had people ask me before, how do you go about managing difficult clients and difficult conversations? And so I’ve had to spend quite a bit of time thinking about this and actually analysing what it is that I do.

So let me tell you a little story. Last year, maybe in the second half of last year, we’re working away, my team and I. We’re all doing our different things. And then, an email lands in our inbox. And Chloe says to everyone, Guys, listen to this and proceeds to read this email. [00:02:00] So we’re listening and we’re listening and the office is really quiet and the client is having a good old winge.

So Chloe finishes reading and then all of a sudden everybody’s saying, Oh, we need to say this. We need to say this. Maybe we need to do this, including me. We’re all just reacting to what’s in this email. And then I walked away to get coffee, got inside, I’ve come back. And as I’ve come back, I’ve thought this client is just reacting.

They’re reacting to something else that’s happened. And my team has read this email. We’ve gone straight [00:03:00] into research and investigation mode. What is it that happened here? Is this something that we even should be reading? Like, why are you sending us this email to complain about this? What is our role here?

And you can see how everything puts a spanner in the works. Everybody stops. We’re all scrambling.

And in the midst of all of that, I have realized this is a reaction. Now, luckily, I had actually just been updating the module in OBM Academy that’s all about difficult conversations and giving clients what they really need, not necessarily what you just see. I paused and I had all of this information rolling around in my head and I found it so funny because it’s like, Leanne, you’ve just been, talking to OBMs about this exact thing.

Today, [00:04:00] I have eight tips for you. Eight tips on how to gently deal with angry clients and difficult conversations. The first one is do not react to their reaction. Stop and take a breath. So in my team’s scramble of why are they saying this and what has happened and, we’ve all gone into a fluster, we’re just reacting to something that has landed.

And here’s the thing, when you react to something, it’s unexpected for you to react as a quick response to something. And so you’re not really thinking properly. You need to actually take a breath and think about whatever the situation is that you’re in, regardless of whether it’s an email from a client or something completely different in life.

Number [00:05:00] two, redefine your purpose. So when we’ve received an email like that we need to remember that our purpose for reading the email and our purpose for responding to the email is not to defend anyone. You never should read an email with the pretense that this is just an attack on me. This is just someone saying that I’ve done the wrong thing or that someone else has done the wrong thing or, it’s accusatory or whatever.

Because let’s be honest, email has no tone and there’s so many other things that can come into play here. When we’re reading things like this and when we’re responding, our purpose needs to be to re-establish security. Usually, if you’ve got an email or are having a conversation where it feels a little bit like, [00:06:00] hang on, are they trying to say I’ve done the wrong thing?

It’s not actually about you or what you’ve done. There’s something that is underlying that the person that you’re communicating with needs security around. They’re concerned about something. If they weren’t concerned, they wouldn’t have brought it up. Number three is look beneath the surface. What is the problem really?

Or what is the question that they’re asking you really? Because just like you, people can be quite intimidated to have conversations that make them uncomfortable. They also might not be super confident having to ask for help with something because it makes them feel like they’re not the most knowledgeable.

People find it hard to ask for help. People find it hard to go, oh, I don’t know how to [00:07:00] do this, but these people will know. And sometimes in their own stuff, they get stuck there. And so then when they come back to you to go, I need help. Can someone just show me this thing? It seems like they’re having a go, but really they will, they’ve had this whole internal dialogue already.

And it has nothing to do with you. So we want to work out what the problem is really, because the reaction that you’re seeing is just that. It’s a reaction at their action to an occurrence based on something. It’s a symptom. So it’s not the actual source. And that’s why usually when you get some kind of Email a conversation that has a negative connotation.

There’s something it’s stemming from. And that’s [00:08:00] why I say don’t react to their reaction. I’m not reacting to their action. I’m reacting to their reaction. Because it reminds me that there’s a reason they’re doing that. They’re reacting to something else. And if I can work out there’s something else This will all get resolved really calmly.

Number four, think about who the problem relates to. Is it even you? So this will change how you manage the entire situation. Sometimes you get the brunt of a reaction, but it actually has nothing to do with you. It has to do with something someone else did. And you just happen to be the person who usually has the answers.

So in this situation, my team and I are pulling all of this apart. And it actually had nothing to do with any of us. It was aimed at somebody else, but [00:09:00] we’ve been included because we usually have the ability to go, ah, if this is what you’re needing, here you go. Or this is why they did that to settle the issue.

So it’s really important to think about, hang on a sec, what is my role here? Because it might not be, your role here is for me to yell at you or be annoyed at you because something is broken or didn’t go the way I expected. So we want to keep, a cool head. 5. When you’re dealing with things like this, when you get an email that lands in your inbox like that, measure the level of input needed.

In this one scenario, the email was read, everybody stopped. Then we had a big conversation. Then we thought about other things. Imagine how much time we wasted. Collaboratively. It might not have been much individually, but that’s an hour of our time just because we [00:10:00] all decided to talk about it and go, uh, and have our little panic.

And really, it wasn’t even for us. So I could have just saved myself an hour by going, hmm, not quite sure about this, I’ll deal with it later and see what happens. So we want to measure how much time we’re going to put in, discussing with other people and investigating what happened and when, right? You don’t want to spend hours gathering facts and information for something that’s not really a priority or doesn’t matter.

It just seems like something at the moment or you’ve just perceived it a certain way, not that the client has. You’re just wasting precious time. So I really want you to think about the impact of whatever the conversation pertains to. Number six. Take an outsider perspective and come up with a solution.

[00:11:00] Without going down the rabbit hole of here’s a 27 step pathway to fix this, you might read that email and go, okay, I can see that you might have perceived it as they’re really annoyed because they can never find the podcast episode that they’re looking for and they’ve asked 57, 000 times and I can’t believe it’s not in my inbox.

And can someone just give me the link? You might have nothing to do with the process of how this person gets access to a podcast or where they’re saved or anything. But, you might also know exactly where all the episodes are. Instead of reacting and being annoyed, just email back and go, Hey, saw your email.

I’m guessing you probably want to know where the latest podcast is. It’s here, and where the stats are that show how it’s performing. These are here. Let me know if you need anything else. And instead of going down the pathway of trying to justify and think about all the things, you’ve just [00:12:00] given them exactly what they needed and it’s taken two minutes.

So it’s taking all the drama out and looking for what it is that they actually need right now. Number seven, don’t be passive aggressive. So here’s the thing with passive aggression, it’s Easy. It’s quite easy to be passive aggressive and then to hide behind the fact that we haven’t yelled and, I don’t understand why anybody could really point some blame at the way I’m behaving because I haven’t done anything that’s overtly aggressive.

But passive aggression is just another form of aggression, and it will just make it worse. Adding in snarky comments or being sarcastic with situations like this, just blows it up. Except when you behave that way you’ve behaved the wrong way as well. So all of a sudden if someone else has been behaving in a [00:13:00] manner that’s incorrect, you’ve just put yourself in the firing line straight with them because you’re not dealing with it in an assertive manner. You’re still being aggressive and snarky in a different way. And it doesn’t make anybody feel good and it will not make the situation better.

And it won’t make you feel good. At the end of the day, you might feel like you’ve had your two cents of, I showed them. It doesn’t really give you satisfaction. And it just means there’s going to be another conversation that’s had later. And number eight, if you get this email and it is a result of an error that you’ve made or something that you’ve done or not done, don’t reply.

Just pick up the phone and apologize. Don’t beg. Do. Not. Beg. If you’ve made a mistake, you’re a human being and we make [00:14:00] mistakes. And if saying sorry and doing what you can to rectify the practical situation in front of you is not enough, then really, your client is a butt. That’s the reality here. They’re not very nice, they’re not going to accept that humans make errors sometimes.

That you were a big enough person to go, Hey, yep, that one was me fixing it. Now. Like they can either move on or they can fester and be annoyed about it. But I find that Alot of OBMs will go into that begging for forgiveness point. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I’ve done this. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.

What can I do? I’ll do anything. And then the next thing. And the next thing. And that’s the narrative they always get. Whereas if you can step back a little bit. Fix the situation and then put in place things so that that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. You’re going to get a lot better of a response and you’re going to have much [00:15:00] more ownership over your role.

And then everybody can move forward like grown ups, which is the aim of the game here. Now if you follow the eight different things that I’ve said in this episode, usually what will happen is you’ll be dealing with your angry client in a way that diffuses the situation, which is the aim of the game is to recognize that someone is unhappy about something. That there are multiple perspectives as to what it is and why that could be. And working out a way to give the person what they really need so they can walk away feeling good and not have that frustration anymore. I hope that that helps you so that next time you get an email like that or have to have a conversation like that.

You’re not panicked and you have a little bit of a roadmap on how to handle it. [00:16:00] Because if we have steps to take, we can remove part of the emotion. And that’s the hardest bit is removing the emotion from these situations. But if we have a little list, well, there’s no emotion in the list. It’s just a list that can help our head get in the game.

Hope you found it helpful. If you are an OBM and you are looking to up your OBM game, Google OBM Academy. Check it out. That is where I share the ins and outs of everything I have learned as an OBM, so that you can be a rockstar too. Bye everybody! [00:17:00] 

E26 How to handle multiple client projects as an OBM

 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of The Audacious OBM. I’m Leanne Woff, and I’m super excited to have you here with me today. Today’s episode is all about client management. It is how to manage multiple clients as an OBM. This is a question I actually get asked a lot. That is, how do you go about having more than one client, especially with the kind of role that being an OBM is.

We are personable, we are in depth, we are high touch. So how can you possibly go about that and be that invested with multiple clients? So in this episode, I’m gonna give you some tips and tricks into how you can do this with ease and give you some examples of some of the things that I do and have done in the past that makes being an OBM, manageable and keeps your schedule, nice and sharp and succinct with  your clients feeling loved up.

All right, so let’s get stuck in. The success or failure, when it comes to managing multiple clients at one time, when you’re working to this level, really comes down to clarity. Clarity will be your indicator. The clearer that you are about things, the easier it will be and the smoother your schedule will run.

So when we are quoting, when we are creating packages or when we are having introduction chats with clients, we wanna get super clear on what the job actually is and what the capacity will be for you to commit to this. So if we can list out inclusions that are really specific and even list out exclusions, so things that aren’t going to fall into what you are offering, this is going to add that layer [00:03:00] of clarity. Now what I want you to be doing is looking at these inclusions and managing your capacity. How much time is involved in each of these things? How much consistent time is needed? So sometimes it is easier for us to say, do some planning one day, and then do you know, some strategy prep the next day, whatever it might be, how you work with clients.

You really need to think about blocks of time, and if what’s required of this quote, this project, this retainer, whatever it is that you are doing, is it consistent time or is it No, it’s gonna have to be spread out over these days in these weeks until you have a really nice map. Really the aim here is to get a project plan going, even if it’s a retainer.

Because we still should know how long roughly things take us. We also should know where our [00:04:00] critical points are. We know when a job is big and when there will be tight turnarounds, and we know when something will be fairly cruisy, and so we wanna be factoring all of this in and laying out the pieces.

How do we do that? When I’m first mapping anything, including my own time, usually I start with a calendar on one screen and a spreadsheet on the other, because I’m very visual that way. I wanna be able to see, okay, here’s my week and here’s all of the things I need to fit into this week, next week, the week after, or in general.

And then I have a spreadsheet so that I can, . brainstorm and brain dump a little bit without having to create more calendar events if I don’t need to right now, so I can play with it. And first, I work in blocks. I love time blocking, even if it is just for setting up your overall [00:05:00] high level plan. So if you are trying to work out, okay, I’ve got family, I’ve got clients, I’ve got business, what do I, how do I map this?

Okay, family. I know that that might take 10 hours a week, and I know that Susie has soccer on Wednesdays. Map in those things first. And then in your spreadsheet you can go, okay, out, out of my, 30 hours to work this week, I will have to take five of that for picking kids after school. So that leaves me with 25 hours.

Now, if I know that I want to take 30 minutes every day for lunch, that takes another two and a half hours out of that total. Now I’m gonna go and block in my lunch, in my calendar. So this is another thing. Always block in your breaks or you won’t have them , [00:06:00] you’ll just keep working. Whereas when they’re in there, they become like an appointment for you and you wanna meet your appointments.

So block in your breaks. Now, we’ve got breaks, we’ve got kids, we’ve got what’s left in work time, and I want you to think about each of the different services that you offer. How long does it actually take you to deliver those services? So you might just have a general OBM package and if you are charging by the hour and selling hourly packages, it becomes really easy, right?

Because then it’s just, okay, I’ve got 10 hours a week in clients across the board, so I know I have to find 10 hours of time to deliver my client work. That’s so set those blocks up. It might not be as straightforward as that because even though charging by the hour can be great. A lot of the time packages are more profitable.

So we sell those, which is where your [00:07:00] deliverables C become really important because we need to be able to see, this is what I’m operating to for the next however long. So you might have a project that’s going over three months and you might have mapped that project out and you know you are going to spend about five hours a week on that project, mapping the time for those things.

Then. Once we’ve done that, we need to add in some business management time. Nothing about running a business is hands-free, and you know that ’cause you run other people’s businesses. You also know that if there is no time mapped for it, you are not going to give it any. So if you don’t put in marketing time, if you don’t put in client update time into your overall schedule, you are never going to do it.

And it will impact your client experience and it will impact your business and your profitability. So we wanna try and put chunks as much as we can. And it’s not even [00:08:00] saying you need to do this week on week, like week on week. You might have a marketing block that is a whole day in a month or half a day every week, or once a fortnight a day, whatever works for you.

But make sure you’re putting something in there. so once we’ve got a map and we understand how much time we actually have, how much working time do you have, that shows you how many clients you can take on roughly. If you know your services really well, which you need to do, then you start pivoting over to your project management tool. So Asana rules my life. I love it, but it only works if I have that clarity that I was talking about earlier. So all of my client projects go in Asana. My clients cannot access them. This is for running my business, my team, and me, the work that I am doing with clients [00:09:00] also gets put into their project management system. That is where I give them updates. And so what this means is there’s double handling, but can I tell you double handling, this one thing is worth it. I have not found a better way to do this, but giving your clients, the information they need within their system is crucial.

Knowing what your day, week, month looks like and what the priority is and your timelines are for things, your ability to save things somewhere where no one else can see it, or to keep notes as you’re going, it’s also crucial. So Asana does that for me, and sometimes it means putting an update in the client’s Asana and putting the same update in mine.

Sometimes mine has extra notes that my client doesn’t see. Sometimes the client’s one has links that mine doesn’t need. [00:10:00] it’s all very, holistic the way that I do it, but I have clear objectives. Again, with clarity, I need to know that the client has what they need, that everything that business needs to function, have a trail create systems to scale later on, have a history of what’s happened so that my clients can get their update as soon as they want it, for them to see if things are on track or off track, it needs to be in their tool. And then for me to be able to coordinate my own work my week, my team, what they’re doing, be able to see where all our clients are up to across the board, I need Asana updated. And so how I do that is I have a project for each client. And I have our key milestones.

So what are the things that we are doing with this client that are going to show me that we’ve completed something or that are going to show me that we’re progressing towards our goal? And again, this can look [00:11:00] different based on how you’ve structured your services. If it is, say you are setting up, 

you are creating processes for a client. You wanna streamline things in your project, your milestones might be, okay, we’re gonna do an audit first, then we are going to, once we’ve got that audit, we’re going to map out all the gaps. Then we’re going to, create the plan of what we think is missing, what we think is needs to be updated and overhauled, but maybe some of these processes are too old.

We’re going to include in that possibly the different tools that we need or the different team members we need to talk to. So creating that plan would be one of the milestones. Then rolling out that plan is going to be the next thing. Potentially your plan has three big areas. Each one of those areas becomes a milestone, and then there’s handover.

So you’ll be able to look at that all different ways. Okay? So whether it’s [00:12:00] retainer or not, then you’ll have that for every client. So you’ll be able to pull reports on where everything is up to. And for each action that is in your tool, I want you to know how long you plan to spend on it. Give things a time estimate and then plan that time.

Make sure that these things are feeding in together. Otherwise you’ll be over capacity and you won’t be able to meet your needs, and then you’ll be upset and your clients will be upset and it won’t be great. . Once we’ve got everything in our tool, so we’ve got things in our calendar in terms of the blocks of when we are gonna work on things and who’s working on what, when our meetings are, we’re making sure our balance is right in terms of how many hours we need to commit to different things, life and business.

We’ve got our tool, which [00:13:00] has our tasks, it has our big plans and our little plans. It has all of our team. It can run reports and give us progress updates so we know, oh, these are the tasks I have to do in this block, and we can go and do it. The next piece is using that to boost communication. So we really wanna keep our clients up to date.

And this can be part of the hard bit of having multiple clients is we feel like there’s this big burden on how much we have to update everybody. But really that’s just reactive behavior. If you already know what you’re going to be working on, you can give a pre-update, Hey, just letting you know that this is gonna be my focus.

Keeping them in the loop and then giving them an update when you’re done. Hey, just letting you know everything is on track. You can see it here in your project management tool. And I’ve left notes. And here this is over to you to review. And if that is not natural for you, [00:14:00] try and make it a habit.

But if you can’t, then block that time in. Put it in there. Must update client. Have the weekly meeting. Make sure you know what you’re talking about in those weekly meetings. Give them the recap because I tell you what, if you are not meeting your objectives, you are going to know when you are doing the notes for that meeting.

When you are setting that agenda, you are gonna start feeling like, I actually haven’t done it. Why haven’t I done it? We wanna review and be really clear, be honest with yourself, what your capacity is. And then

 I really want you to add extra time. So as humans, we always don’t give ourselves enough time. We underestimate how long something will take us, and the more time pressure we have, the lower the client experience is the lower quality of work. Because then we start rushing and we miss things, [00:15:00] and then your reputation is at stake.

So how do I handle multiple clients? I’m clear. I’m clear on what I’m doing. I’m clear on when I’m doing it. I’m clear on what I need to fit into my week, and I’m clear on what my process is. Those are the things that keep my business on track. And I’ve built in rhythms. So I know this is when I go and look at where everything is up to.

This is what I do. If something is off track, this is how I update clients. This is the areas where things might go off track, and here’s why. Sometimes you’re gonna have instances where you can’t predict everything. You can ballpark, but until you’re actually there, you won’t be able to give the full scope.

And all it means is you have to be really clear with your clients again in communicating with them. When we get to this point. I think from what I [00:16:00] know now that it’s going to look like this, but here’s some key factors that might change that. And if I get in there and I see that well, actually you’ve got four email marketing tools and not just two like you thought you did, and you’ve got more data, and it means that this job is going to roll on, it means we will need to alter the project plan because it is not within scope now. It is different. Some pieces have moved. So what do we need to do to cater for that? And we do it in advance. All of these things are going to help you manage multiple clients and still be fully in it. Keep notes, keep documentation, and always work from a place as if you are not the only one that is going to touch it.

Because then when you go back to it, you’ll be able to see exactly where you’re up to. You’ll be able to jog your own memory. You’ll be able to give the client the experience they deserve and that you can deliver. [00:17:00] So I hope that that helps you . there, I could go on and on and I could pull this down into multiple layers.

So I just wanna reiterate that this is more of a high level overview. Lots of clients, biggest things – Communication and Clarity. If you can do that, then you’ll be well on your way to doing this stress free. See you next week everybody. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star review because that’s how other OBM’s find us and it can help them too.