Lara Schmoisman  0:05  

This is coffee number five. I’m your host, Lara Schmoisman. How many times you heard the phrase, this is business, not personal. This is something I learned the hard way, running my own company. Welcome to Coffee, number five. And today, we have in this mini episode, and it’s all about business. It’s not personal, there are a few things that I learned and I want to share with you. And I think that we all had to deal with our fair, if you’re a service provider, we all have to deal with our people, our clients, and sometimes it’s just not easy to to do you get to situations that you agree, and sometimes you need to agree to disagree. And there is a lot to be said, and I have a lot of stories that maybe I shouldn’t tell. But what I can tell is that I do learn a lot from situations that it’s just business, it’s not personal, and a lot of people have problems dividing those two. For me, I can always be super friendly, super amicable. But at the end of the day is business, you’re there to provide a service, and the other person needs to pay for your service. So I have some points that I want to come across with you. And I just want to highlight that they’re important that you if you can learn or you can keep them in mind, even if you’re starting your own business, I think that when you start your own business, as I mentioned, many times, we ended up giving a lot for free. And when you get things for free, it’s like they don’t have the same value. When you give something for free. Also, what happens is that the other person’s like, why would you charge me later on for something that I was getting for free? Or why are you more valuable, or in my guests that I have a team? People say it’s on for her, it’s easy to do it because she has a team? Yeah, but I have a huge commitment that is every month to pay my team. So it doesn’t matter how successful you are, I think that you always should be approachable, you should be able to talk to whoever you need to talk. And that conversation needs to be open. There are some people like they are. And there are a lot of my clients and a lot of people that they love, just to blame, blame, like, and I’m against the blame. I’m against pointing fingers, I do believe that it’s important to understand the situation and understand what’s the problem. And so that that to happen again. But it’s not about putting the blame is about to understand. And we’re humans, we make mistakes and errors happen. Of course we try to things not happen. And this is I’m talking about internally, my team and with clients, but there’s nothing worse that people to put blame and things that they don’t know, they think that because we do things with Facebook or Google, we are responsible of Google or Facebook. How would they deal with things and that’s not possible it was on its own. If Facebook has issues have issues, this has nothing to do with my job or my ethics. But it will be nice that they once in a while they tell me hey, this is happening. There’s any issues or whatnot, they put the blame. So please don’t take the blame personally, just always use this an experience, and to learn. And also to if you have a team, it’s a learning opportunity to, hey, this is happening, let’s analyze why it’s happening. And then from them, we can improve because you always can be improved. And you have to realize that not everything is about it. Don’t take it personal. It’s people have stress in their life. Your clients have their own issues that they’re dealing with. And they believe that if they hire in and they pay you it’s not that they really want to believe it. But somehow they think many times if you’re a service provider that the owner, it’s not that like that. So put guidelines both. We have we have for example some agency a client guide, we work from these hours to these hours which communicate in this ways. Recently, I put a new clause in my contract actually is the first clause in my contract that it says right now that someone hire us we are an agency of record and we’re not going to work with third party consultants and I’m not doing it I that gives me a lot of headaches. And of course they The new kid comes with all these ideas, and the new person always wants to come and whisper in someone’s ear and tell all the things that we’re doing wrong. And without not knowing even the strategy that we’re putting together, people love to talk. So when we need to learn how to do is just put guidelines, if you will have it in the contract, you can always use that and easier experiences and add it to the contract. Don’t be afraid to modify your contracts according to your needs. As you learn how to deal with your business. If you see that your clients do certain things, just put it in your contract. So it’s not about you, it’s about you being able to do your job for them to succeed and succeed together. Because how I see it is when you are working with someone, it’s kind of a partnership. That’s why it’s so important that you have a good relationship. Because communication is essential, you need to also put, how you want to communicate, and how our channels of communications, and how often they can expect to communicate. And when they send you an email, how fast you’re gonna respond. Because nobody, it’s would be ridiculous that they want to send you a text and that you’re gonna be responding. Or the second, I always try to be fast, and I never, but never will cause someone asking me a question. But sometimes I’m busy, life happens. And so I can not respond immediately. But I’m not a procrastinator at the same time. So I always respond, if I can I respond immediately or soon to say, Listen, I don’t have that information, I will give it to you soon. But again, don’t take it personal, don’t take it many times is said there is a complaint or problem, we did this, take a deep breath and analyze and see if there was an error or not. And, and then you can respond accordingly. First, don’t take it personal. 

One more thing, I don’t think maybe it’s my age, or whatever it is, but I don’t give a fuck of what people think about me anymore. I doesn’t matter, you do your business, whoever doesn’t like you or doesn’t like what he’s have to say, they’re not your ideal client, or they’re not going to be part of your business, you are your business. And that’s what makes you unique, that makes you different from other people. So there is always a frog for every princess, and who knows they can become your prince. So no worry about it, just be yourself. And also, another thing is you are not a business, you are a person and your business, you have business hours, I make myself available many times after hours to talk to a client of the need me or even on weekends. But this needs to be something agreed. Not I mean, I’m still a person, I have my family, my house, I need to take care of I mean, I even need to go to the market. People Yes, I go to the market, and I need to feed and cook for my kids and even feed my dog. So all those things need to be done. And I need time for that. So it’s okay that you are not working all the time. You identify your business hours and do things by agreement.

Then, as I told you, everything is timing. And so you cannot take a failure of a project that they didn’t work out. I mean, people come to you with a specific purpose. And some things are just not meant to be. So you need to be every business has a risk, like my own business has a risk, everyone’s business is a risk. So the person who hires you, they are assuming that risk and you the only thing you need to do is to know in the bottom of your heart, that you are doing the best you can for your client. That’s the basically you can do if you know your shit, you shouldn’t doubt yourself. 

And the other thing it’s super important is as a CEO, establish yourself, don’t be afraid to raise your prices. If you I mean, this is important. You need to be competitive to the services you’re providing. I don’t believe in overcharging making multiple millions for services that are in promises I cannot make basically but I I do believe it to get compensated fairly. And if someone cannot afford you, well, again, timing. Maybe it’s not the moment for that relationship. 

And be a leader. Be a leader in anything you do. I think that’s the law. Last tip I can give you today, be a leader in each lead your client, if they are talking to you, if they’re, and that’s why I put that clause in my, in my contract, because if I’m going to be leading this trial strategy, I’m going to be leading their efforts, I need to make sure that I’m the the leader here, and I don’t have other key players that they are going against me. And that normally is happening when you have too many consultants or too many companies, they create conflict, I saw this video in LinkedIn that you know, they’re the kids are sitting with a cup of tea with a plate of flour in in their head and their lineup and they need to pass and flip the, the plate the plate with flour. And they’re like 10 kids, and do you know how much it gets to the end? Zero. And that’s how teamwork affects that when you try to work with all different consultants. And this is what I always talk about about creating omni channel and created a collaborative environment. That’s how we work at my agency is because when you have so many companies, they go in different strategies, it’s just going to be a big mess. So if I address all your questions, or maybe there are many other questions that you have about running a business running an agency or marketing himself that I would love to answer and do these mini episodes and what I can share with you all these tips and tricks that I learn over the years. So please get back to us. You can send your questions in Instagram, Facebook, if you’re watching this in YouTube, please remember to subscribe. And I’ll see you next week on copy number five. See you then bye.

Was so good to have you here today. See you next time. Catch you on the flip side. Ciao ciao.