Speaker 1: How involved should the client be with the project management? Some context from the question here is, do we let the client into our tools? Do we let the client talk with our people? Do we let the client set the agenda for meetings? Do we let them set milestones? Remember what we said, the process is the product. And so, yes, we want to be collaborative with our clients. We want to make sure that we're ultimately transparent with our clients. If that means putting them in the project management tool that you use, fantastic, do that. If that means sending them a timeline, great, do that. So be transparent. But you also don't want them to dictate the engagement. You don't want them to set milestones and tell you how to do your job.

Speaker 2: You want to give them as much visibility as they need to see to make the decisions that they need to make. So at the very least, what we do when we start off a project, we give them an overview, a breakdown of all the major steps and milestones and schedule from beginning to end. Just a brief overview of what that looks like. Then every time we post, we let them know what just happened, what did we do, what's going to happen next, and what we need feedback on specifically for this round. And then you also, this is a little trick that Ben had us do, is in the subject of your emails, usually we do this via email, we say logo posting one of three. So it's very clear that what state you are in the process. Sometimes it gets a little redundant. But why you want to do that is you want to have a clear log of the decision tree. The decision tree is basically every decision you and your client make all the way to the very end of the project. So that if you are logging this properly, let's say you're in round three of something and they try to make you go around or give you feedback that was contradictory from round one, you can go back to your decision tree and say, you know what, in round one we tried something like this and Mary and Bobby thought this wasn't the best way to go. Should we continue to go down this route because I feel like we've already gone there? How should we proceed? If you have a clear log of that, it's very easy for your client to have transparency into your process, visibility of all the decisions that have been made, and for you guys to just stay on track.

Speaker 1: Yep. And honestly, when we build Gantt charts or timelines and projects, we actually build the client feedback into those things. So they know, because we share this with them, they know that after we submit, they literally have three days, five days, whatever that timeframe is, to get back to us and get us a decision or the rest of the project is going to be delayed. Right. And when that happens, it's more money, more time, and they know that, hey, it's kind of your fault.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So giving them that transparency keeps them in check.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 2: So what happens when they miss the milestone? If you were doing what we just spoke about and being very transparent of where you are in the stage of the project, it's very clear that if a client has missed milestone number one, that for us, we just have them lose a round of revision. So let's say you typically give clients three rounds of revisions per deliverable. So if they miss giving us feedback on round one, then we say, you know what? We lose a round of feedback towards the end. And they're okay with that because they know that they needed the extra time. And then that keeps going so that you could still stay on track to hit the deadline. Yep. Right. Other ways that you can do this, you can bend. You can bend. So let's say if you're working on a project and there's three deliverables and deliverable number one is going so smoothly. Actually, you only posted once and the client's like, yep, that's good to go. We could go print that thing. Yep. Then you know you have extra resources, time and money that have been left over from something else. Use that and allocate it to the deliverable that's getting challenged, that needs more resources behind it.

Speaker 1: But you also want to make sure that you're transparent on what that costs you. Exactly. And so you've got to let the client know like, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to remove a round of revision because this delay has cost us X amount of days in production and we literally can't make more time. Right. So it can't just be like you can't bend over for your clients all the time.

Speaker 2: No, you don't want to bend over. When I say bend, it's just like negotiate where you can and do right by them. But you don't want to sacrifice your team. Right. You don't want to sacrifice your time. Why should you work extra hours? Because they didn't do their part. Right. This is a collaboration. You guys are working half and half. The client's doing their half. You're doing your half. And you just need to be a good shepherd both for your team and the client to guide everyone through the process. So bend and negotiate where you can only where it makes sense, where it's not impacting your bottom line. But be very transparent of where you are in the stage of every step of the project.

Speaker 1: Another way to do it, and this is the ultimate power move, is just to flip the table and then storm out.

Speaker 2: That was Ben 1.0. That was before he came here.

Speaker 1: How do you manage decision makers who want different things? Oh. I'm going to let you take this one. Okay. This is a beastly one.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So you might have a meeting where you're posting work, you're getting feedback. Mary says one thing, John says another, and Bobby says something completely different. Damn it, Bobby. So if we're on a call with them, usually we will be very transparent and say, you know what? Bobby, Sherry, Johnny, I heard three different things and they feel like they're contradictory in terms of how we need to move forward. For me to take this back to my team, I need a clear decision on how to proceed. Of the three things that I heard, which is priority? And let them fight it out. So I let the stakeholders fight it out. I'm not trying to make the decision. If they need help and you could tell they're bickering, going back and forth, you can come in as a third party because you're just trying to be helpful as a lead there. In my best recommendation, I recommend that we go direction B over direction A. Of course, you guys are the decision makers and you guys should make the final decision, but that's my recommendation.

Speaker 1: And guys, nine times out of ten when this happens, the decision makers probably don't even know that they're disagreeing or that they have different opinions. Right. They could be sending you an email or an Instagram DM or however they're getting in touch and saying things that, number one, they may not mean. Or number two, they may not know that it directly conflicts with something that somebody else wants. Right. And so by being completely transparent and saying, hey, these are the pieces of feedback that we got. Which one do you want me to prioritize? What direction do you want to go in? Right. That's hands down. It works every time.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you do that on the phone, great. If it needs to be via email, that's fine. Right. You might get three different messages from three different people. Ideally, you have one point of contact for all of this stuff. But let's say you do get multiple points of feedback. You can just consolidate, say, Mary said this. John said this. Bobby said this. For us to move forward, we need to have a clear direction. Yep. Help us get there.

Speaker 1: I hope you guys got value out of this. And if you want to see more about project management and what it takes to run a creative business, let us know in the comments below.

Speaker 2: And if you want to run your projects like a pro, consider taking our course, the Practical Project Management course, which we're leaving a link in the description below.

Speaker 1: We'll see you inside.