Ep 143: The 79% Problem:
Why You're Over-Servicing Clients (And Losing Money)
SUMMARY
You have lots of active clients that you work with, each one with their different preferences, different approval processes and different communication styles. And your team keeps asking, "Wait, how does this client want it again?" And you keep answering the same questions over and over again.
This isn't just annoying—it's costing you money. According to Function Fox, 79% of creative agencies over-service clients without proper documentation of what's actually being included in the scope. But the real cost isn't just the free work. It's the cognitive load of having to remember these unique preferences for every single client without a system to capture them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️Undocumented client preferences create a bottleneck. When only you know how each client operates, you become the single point of failure for your entire team, answering the same questions repeatedly.
⚡️Context switching costs you 10+ hours per week. Every "quick question" about client preferences pulls you out of deep work, costing 5-20 minutes of momentum each time you have to mentally switch contexts.
⚡️A Client Playbook solves the documentation problem. Creating a simple 5-section playbook for each client (Communication, Scope, Brand Voice, Approvals, and Quirks) saves hours weekly and ensures consistent client experiences.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. When you force your team to guess at client preferences, you're being unkind to them, you're being unkind to your client who gets inconsistent service, and you're being unkind to future you."
💬 "Future you and future team members are forgetful. You won't remember client preferences six months from now because you have 12, 14 other clients that you're having to remember stuff for as well."
💬 "If you can document it once, you can reference it forever."
EPISODE RESOURCES
⚡️Free Client Templates & Future You Framework - Download client onboarding toolkit and documentation templates
⚡️Dare to Lead by Brené Brown - "Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind."
⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
TRANSCRIPT
You have lots of active clients that you work with, each one with their different preferences, different approval processes and different communication styles. And your team keeps asking, wait, how does this client want it again? And you keep answering the same questions over and over again. Let's get into it.
Welcome back to Creativity Made Easy. This is the podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. This is a podcast for all creatives: designers, photographers, writers, all creative entrepreneurs and agency owners who seek practical and actionable strategies to grow their creative business through efficiency.
I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative process consultant and founder of Chief Creative Consultants. We help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams to create with efficiency as they scale together.
Now I want to set the tone for today's episode with this simple quote from Brené Brown, which I'm pretty sure it's probably been said way before Brené Brown, but she published it in a book, so we're going to give her props for it. It's this: clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. That means clarity is kind, right? And lack of clarity is not kind. And that's what we're going to get into today.
Look, when your client preferences live only in your head, you become the bottleneck for every decision, every question, every new team member who joins. All of that has to go through you and that can get really overwhelming. It creates this question trap, right? And it's a lot of the same questions over and over again.
Right? It's how does this client want these revisions handled? What's their approval process? Do they want weekly check-ins or not? What system are we using to upload their stuff on their platforms? Things like that, right? You answer these questions from memory and you're pulling from scattered sources, right? Because we have lots of things going on. We talked about this before that each interruption in our thought process can cost us anywhere from five to 15 to 20 minutes total a day of focused work time, right? And you multiply that throughout the week, and sometimes you're spending close to 10 hours a week just being a human database when you don't really need to be.
It ends up being hard for you to hire new team members effectively because you have to verbally download to them all the client knowledge, right? Onboarding can take you four to six weeks instead of maybe only one to two weeks. And these new hires that you do onboard, they end up making mistakes because they don't know the unwritten rules, right? Oh, this client has this little quirk. Sorry, I forgot to tell you about that, right? And then clients end up getting inconsistent experiences depending on who's working on their project.
And we've talked many times on this podcast before about context switching and it's something that we're going to come back to a little bit today as well. Every time somebody asks you or someone on your team, how does this particular client work? You have to stop and ask yourself. You have to stop whatever you're working on, right? You have to mentally switch to that client's context. You have to recall a bunch of scattered information from memory and then explain it, right? You have to upload it to them verbally, which isn't documented for next time. And so then you switch back to your original task and that's where you lose your 10 to 15 minutes of momentum that you have.
This is what we call a Future You problem, right? My Future You note-taking methodology enters here, right? Because future you and future team members are forgetful, right? You won't remember client preferences six months from now because you have 12, 14 other clients that you're having to remember stuff for as well. And it starts to get blurry because you're trying to keep it all right here.
So Client B comes back after a three-month gap. You're going to waste time relearning their workflow all over again. But the Future You methodology teaches that if you can document it once, you can reference it forever.
According to Function Fox, 79% of creative agencies over-service clients without proper documentation of what's actually being included in the scope. And we end up getting a little bit of scope creep in there, right? But the real cost isn't just the free work. It's the cognitive load of having to remember these unique preferences for every single client without a system to remember all of these things.
And that's what we're here for. That's what we use things like the Future You framework. And that's why today I'm introducing to you what you should have for every client is an individual client SOP. And if you don't like the SOP, 100% get it. I've been using the word playbook. How about we have a playbook for every client, an individual client playbook?
It's not a project management document, it's a client preferences playbook. It answers the recurring questions about the client over and over again about how this specific client operates. I'm going to break down some sections of this playbook for you.
First thing, let's start with communication preferences. How do they like to be communicated to? Is it Slack? Is it email? Is it comments on some other type of platform? Is it a phone call? Is it a text? What is it? How about response time expectations? Obviously we have our own response time expectations, but what are their response time expectations? When they reach out to you, are they expecting a 24-hour return turnaround? Are they expecting same day? Are they expecting weekly check-ins?
Who are the key decision makers? Who needs to be CC'd on communications? What's the meeting cadence that you have with them? Is it weekly? Is it bi-weekly? Is it monthly? What are the best times to reach them? Are they easier to reach in the morning, the afternoons? Do we avoid Mondays? All of these questions add up into our communication preferences in their playbook.
So for example, let's say a client prefers Slack for quick questions and email for approvals, right? So for example, in this communication preference section of the playbook, we can notate that the client prefers Slack for quick questions and email for formal approvals. Now, let's say let's call our Sarah as our primary contact over there, but let's call the owner of the company or the CEO, John. He needs to be CC'd in on all creative concepts. And we also need to remember not to schedule meetings with Sarah before 10 a.m. because she has kid drop-off.
These are all these little details that if we just had a playbook for the client that we could reference, then we could easily deliver with excellence and save us and our team so much time.
And the other section in the playbook I want to talk about is scope and deliverables, right? What's included in their standard package? What is it that they're paying us for? What's the actual deliverables? How many rounds of revisions are included in what they're paying us for? What are the file formats that they need them delivered in or file naming that they need them delivered in? What's not included, right? We don't want team members accidentally giving work away that's unnecessary. What's the change order threshold when there's a small tweak? How many of those before we start to go, okay, now it's billable, right?
So here's an example, right? A standard package might include three concept directions, two rounds of revisions and final files in a PNG or a PDF, right? We'll also notate that video edits beyond two rounds, they're going to be billed at $150 an hour. And we're also going to notate on there that they always need Instagram square format, even though they don't ask for it. Just go ahead and include it anyway, because they're going to want it. All of those things you can put in your scope and deliverables section of your playbook and make it easy for your team to find that information when they need to.
Next section, let's talk about brand voice and creative preferences. What is their brand voice, right? Is it playful? Is it corporate? Is it edgy? Is it conservative? Do we have brand guidelines for them? If so, let's go ahead and add them or link them into this playbook. Their design style preferences. Is it minimalist? Is it bold? Is it illustration heavy? What do they love? What do they hate? What's their past feedback patterns? Do they always want headlines shorter and they prefer blue over red, right? You can notate that type of stuff in here.
You could say things like, for example, this is a conservative financial brand, right? So let's avoid humor, keep copy really formal. They hate stock photography, right? Let's use custom illustrations only. And headlines should be under eight words and blue is the brand primary, the specific blue actually. So never use red. It's in their brand guidelines.
A fourth section for this client playbook is the approval process, right? Who approves what? Is it the designer to the creative director to the client or is it straight to the client? How long does their approval typically take? What format do they want to review it in? Do they want a PDF? Do they want a live link? Do they want a prototype? Do they batch approvals or do they review everything immediately as it rolls out of the production?
So for example, you can notate that the client reviews internally before giving feedback. So go ahead and allow three business days minimum. They prefer PDF mockups, not live links, and they'll give that feedback via email, never verbal only. Expect rounds of edits to be batched, not in real time. These are really good notes that you can include in your approval process section of your client playbook.
Now, this last one is kind of a miscellaneous section, but I do think it's needed for every single client playbook. And this is quirks and context, or you could just name it miscellaneous if you wanted to, but it's anything that's unique to this client that a new team member should know, right? Past project challenges and how they were resolved, client personality notes. Are they detail-oriented or are they big picture? Are they collaborative or are they hands-off?
So you can say things here like, the client gets really nervous about timelines, so always build in even more buffer than what we typically do and communicate that progress proactively, which we could do, obviously, through our pizza delivery system. Hit me up if you want information about that. You could also say, they're night owls. They're often going to send feedback at 11 p.m., but just don't expect, like, they're not going to expect responses until the morning they know that. They love being involved in the creative process, so invite them in as much as possible. These are notes that are all good in the quirks and context or the miscellaneous section right there at the end of your client SOP or your client playbook.
Now, there could be many other sections, but the idea here is what will future you or your future team wish that you had documented about this client? That's when you know that needs to go somewhere in that client playbook. You can save it in the client assets folder on whatever drive that you use so your team can easily access it at any time and it saves them from having to constantly bang on your door or call you or text you or interrupt you while you're trying to get your work done and ask you a question that has already been documented because like Brené Brown says, and I'm sure many others have said as well, clear is kind. Clarity is kind and unclear is unkind.
When you force your team to guess at client preferences, you're being unkind to them. And you're being unkind to your client who gets inconsistent service and you're being unkind to future you because they have to answer the same questions over and over again. You have to stop your work and then have to restart your work again.
So what are we going to do now? Three things I want to leave you with this week.
Number one, pick your most complex client. And this week I want you to identify that, identify the client with the most questions, most quirks, most unique preferences. This is going to be your pilot SOP or your pilot client playbook. It's going to save you the most time immediately. The most complex client. Let's go ahead and get that stuff documented. Use those five sections that I talked about and maybe more: communication, scope, brand voice, approvals and different quirks and context clues as well. Look, it'll take you 30 to 45 minutes documenting everything that's currently in your head about this client, but it's going to save you hours in the long run.
All right. After you do that, second thing I want you to do is start a client questions log. Over the next three days, and everybody on your team, every time a team member asks you a client question, I want you to write it down. Every time your client asks you a question, I want you to write it down. After 30 days, you're going to have a perfect list of what needs to be in these playbooks. You're going to get the answers, you're going to get, hey, these are the common questions that I'm getting from my team and my contractors all the time, and these are the common questions that I'm getting from clients all the time, and so I want to put those answers all in the playbook, right? And you'll have all that stuff just in 30 days. It'll be easy.
And once you do all that, then start creating playbooks for your active clients over the next 90 days, right? Set a goal. Hey, one new playbook each week or one new playbook every two weeks, whatever the realistic goal is for you, go ahead and set that. Don't aim for perfection, just getting it done, right? Documented is better than having it memorized every single time. Make a living document. You can update it whenever you learn something new about this client. Keep it as a Google doc, whatever, and store all of those in the client project folders right there on your drive.
And then if you're like me, if you use Asana or Notion or whatever other project management tool you use, go ahead and link that Google Drive link or that drive link into the client's profile or project. And that way we can easily access it because we want to be able to get these things at a moment's notice. If it's too hard to get to, your team, your contractors, they're going to skip it and they're just going to go ask you instead. So make it easy for them to find.
And when you onboard new contractors or new team members, you always reference these playbooks. If they're going to work with a client, you got a whole playbook for this client. Here's everything that you need to know about it.
So a couple of resources I want to call out to you. The clear is kind and unclear is unkind is from Brené Brown's book, Dare to Lead. I do have some client templates and things like that on my website. You can download at dustinpead.com/free and the Future You framework for documentation you can find there as well. Also have the client onboarding toolkit for you there as well.
Look, I'd love to help you build or grow your creative business. So if you're interested in that, head to dustinpead.com. Grab a spot on my calendar today and let's talk. You can connect with me as well on social media at dustinpead, P-E-A-D.
All right, next week, we're going to dive right into something that I actually learned the hard way. I'm going to talk about why I stopped using AI for my personal weekly planning for six months. I planned my week. It was super efficient. It was optimized and it was completely wrong for me. And I'm going to tell you all about why. I'll talk to you next time all about that on the Creativity Made Easy podcast. Have a great week.