← The Futur with Chris Do
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- [00:00]
Chris Doe
Hey, everybody. Chris here, we're trying something a little bit different than what we normally do for the podcast. We're doing solo episodes. These are shorter, more contained, built around certain themes and questions I think are very relevant for us to be talking about. So wherever you're listening to this, however you're seeing this, let us know in the comments and the feedback what you think, and we'll make some adjustments. Foreign I'm going to begin this episode with a metaphor. Be bamboo, my friend, be bamboo. Bamboo grows fast, is very flexible, and it's super strong. When we're talking about clients, you're going to run into a situation where you're not sure if you should go against what they asked for or if you should comply. If you're a younger creative, you just think automatically. The answer has to be go against the client because they don't know what they're doing. And you do at the ripe old age of 22. Let's think about that for a little bit. Most of the time, I'm going to tell you this. You're in the service business, and the only way that you have business is to be of service to your client. You have to understand they're not interfering with your art, you're interfering with their money. You have to really think about this. They afford you the life that you have, the ability to live and express yourself creatively and pay rent, buy food, and save money for a rainy day. A lot of creative people mistakenly believe themselves as artists, where you have a patron who just pays you to make whatever it is that you make. And oftentimes when the client's asked to, I don't know, make the logo a little bit bigger or to move things around, you have an adverse, negative emotional reaction to it. And what happens then? And you don't know this because clients are pretty good at hiding their emotions. They just say to themselves when they get in the car, never again. And whoever hired or recommended Rich or Chris, they're dead to me at this point. So not only have you burned that relationship, you burned the person introduced you, which is an irresponsible thing for you to do. That's why when a client asks me for referral, I'm very careful as to who I refer them to. I want to make sure they do good work and they take good care of them because now my reputation is on the line. It's something that many people don't take into consideration because you're living in your little bubble of designery and you think this is what it's all about. Now I'm going to give you some real life examples of when it's good to bend and when it's not good to bend. We'll start first, like when it's good to bend. Oftentimes we work with clients who have extremely good taste, who have great ideas and understand their clients really well. And they challenge us. They say, you know what, those ideas are great, but how far can we push it? And that gives us the kind of confidence to say, like, you know what? Most clients rein us back in, but this client in particular is pushing us to go crazy to push to find the edges of what they think they can sell to their client. And those are dream relationships. And we found that if you have an open mind, many times those relationships bear the best fruit. Like you do work that's better than what you could normally do because the clients pushed you, they gave you room to sort of hang yourself. I mean, if you wanted to, you can go and create some pretty crazy things. And oftentimes creatives, we do that, we give them that extra mile because they said, you know what, push it, let's go. And we'll spend more money, more time, more resources, trying to find the edges of our creativity. And that's a good time to bend to the client's wishes. Many years ago we were shooting a commercial for Audi. It was the introduction of the A7 in Europe. It's a brand new debut of this kind of hot, fast, four doors sedan that was like very coupe, like in its design sign or coupe, as they say in Europe. It was beautiful and the budget was tight. We could not rent a technocrane. We could not rent a camera that was controlled with motors that we can repeat certain motions or it wasn't stable. All we could afford was a crane, which was handheld. And we're trying to pull off a very precise shot and to keep focus and to keep the shot stable and is the very difficult thing to do when you have humans involved. And so what ultimately happened was we got the footage back and my visual effects supervisor looked at the footage and said, it's kind of unusable. It's unusable. So what he had to do was he had to take frames from that camera, move, break it apart and photo map it back onto a 3D CG car. It's called photogrammetry. To create a photorealistic version of it that wound up taking a lot of time and energy. He said that it was not necessary for us to shoot it on a jib arm. If we couldn't use a Technocrane.
- [04:46]
Rich Cardona
It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.
- [04:51]
Google Gemini
This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. With the Gemini app, you can talk live and have a real time conversation with an AI assistant. It's great for all kinds of things, like if you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or brainstorm creative ideas. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today. Must be 18 to use Gemini Live.
- [05:23]
Chris Doe
When I started my motion design company blind in 95, there was a lot I didn't know. So I tried reaching out to other business owners and professionals for help. What did I find? Many saw me as competition and those who didn't weren't able to give advice that made sense for my line of work. Thankfully, I was able to find my first and only business coach, Kieran McLaren, who mentored me for 13 years. I also learned that my story isn't unique. Many entrepreneurs feel like they're left to figure everything out on their own. It's why I created the Future Pro membership, the community I wish I had when I first started. And I'd like to invite you to check out all that we have waiting for you inside at thefuture.com/pro.
- [06:04]
Rich Cardona
And we're back. Welcome back to our conversation.
- [06:08]
Chris Doe
So in a case like that, when the client's like, well, we want you to do it this way, but we don't have the budget for you to do it the way that you want. We had to just say, no, we can't do it this way. We do not take responsibility for the shot given the circumstances, and we know that you will not be happy with the result if we do it this way. So we have to devise a new plan. According to my VFX supervisor, he said we should have just gone in there with a still camera, taken a bunch of photos that would have been more usable, less work, less painstaking frame to freeze frames and try to stitch together reverse engineer static frames. Because you know when you take a photograph, it's much sharper, higher resolution than if you were pulling video frames from a camera. And so that was the challenge. So in a case like that, we implemented a new rule which is when we know better, when we know that this is going to lead to a bad result, do not agree, do not comply to what the clients ask for, because we know at the end of the day they're not going to be Happy. We're not going to be happy and we're going to be eating it in the shorts, but we're going to spend all kinds of money to fix something that we knew was not going to work. But there aren't that many cases when you know that in fact, that this is not going to work. It's a technical thing, and we, as the technical people in this situation, in this relationship, know better. Most of the times you want to die on the hill for an aesthetic thing and you believe your aesthetic or your taste is superior and therefore has to be the way that it's going to go. We know this aesthetics are subjective. No one has the ability to say this is always the best solution. It's contextual and it's relevant to the client and to the situation and the time. A lot of us have relationships with our clients and we look at ourselves as the vendor, and the vendor has no power in the relationship. We need to shift our mindset from being a vendor to a collaborator or a consultant, in which case they're paying you good money for your opinions and ideas and recommendations. And oftentimes you may disagree. You may have a better way, as long as it's not purely subjective and egotistical. Here's what I suggest that you say this phrase usually gets you out of a lot of trouble and gets you to have your way and them thanking you for it. Here's the phrase, everybody. The phrase is, you're the boss. At the end of the day, I will do exactly what you asked me to do. But hear me out on this one thing. I'm concerned about X, because it will lead to why. Having given you that information, I'm relinquishing my responsibility. You need to make the decision that's best for you. So what we're doing there is we're saying, you have the power, I respect your authority, but I have to voice something that I know is not going to work. But at the end of the day, you get to make that decision. So the next time you get pushback from your clients, run through these three things before you give them an emotional reaction. Number one, ask yourself, is the request reasonable? If it's a reasonable request, it's within the scope of work. Well, then you should just say yes. Number two is, is the request something that you know technically is going to lead to problems? If that's the case, what you need to do is you have to say, stop. We have to have a serious conversation. I need to explain to you something. It's not about subjectively, me wanting to do X versus Y, it's like, here's the problem, what's going to happen? And in this way, I think you're tapping into an idea called the Challenger Sale, which is not to sell something, but to get the clients to question if this is the right way to proceed. So now you're tapping into the like the idea from the Challenger sale, which is not to close the sale, but to get the clients to think, huh, I never thought of it that way before. And to make them part of the decision making process. Number three is if it's purely, purely subjective. Where it's if you were to pull 10 creatives, 10 designers, 10 directors, 10 editors, and say which one's the best and you're not gonna get the same answer, maybe you just need to let that one go. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you have a nightmare client situation where you're not sure if the clients are pushing you too much or if you should push back, let me know in the comments. Send me a dm.
- [10:03]
Rich Cardona
Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Future Podcast is hosted by Chris Doe and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefuture.com and you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.