Transcript – 93. Ask Kris and Don – Should I share personal issues with clients?

Don: Hello and welcome. This is a q and a quickie episode where we answer the question, is it okay to share personal problems with clients? You are listening to Design and Prosper, episode 93.

[Intro music]

Kris: Hey, welcome everybody.

Don: Hello and welcome. This is a great questions

Kris: Yeah, love it. We’ve had a question submitted by a lovely designer, and the question is, What do I do if I’ve got personal things going on in my life and they’re impacting my ability to show up in my business? Do I tell my clients what is going on?

Don: Yeah, Good question. So first of all, we want to say it’s absolutely okay to take time out when you need it. So often we get a bit of stage fright.

We’re like, oh no, this is personal. I need to take time out. Whatever crises has happened, whatever personal issues are happening, and it could be anything and we don’t need to compare it to another crisis for it to be a valid issue in your life. If it’s right for you to pause, then you, you should pause and you need to do that whenever you need to do it. So you give yourself permission to do that?

Kris: Because it can be really frightening when you’re in business and you, it actually feels impossible.

Don: Mm-hmm.

Kris: You think, I can’t, I can’t deal with this thing. I have no time for this thing. I’ve got clients who are relying on me. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And yeah, you have a right to pause. You’re a human being, for goodness sakes. You’re not a machine.

Don: Yeah.

Kris: We need to stop when we need to stop. Otherwise, you’re going to be no good to anybody.

Don: No, no, absolutely. The the second thing we want to say is you don’t have to share the full backstory. It’s nobody’s business. You don’t have to explain yourself. You can pop your business on pause or a project on pause without an explanation, without a full explanation, other than I’m going through a personal situation at the moment that requires my attention. That’s it, and take the time away. You don’t have to tell them what happened, how it happened, when it happened, who else was involved.

It doesn’t matter. It’s not their business. It’s just your business. So keep that to yourself and just allow yourself to be in that power of I need to take time out. It’s personal. I will be back at this time. Which leads us to the next thing. It’s all about communication.

Kris: Yeah. make sure that they understand what’s going to happen next. You’re not just leaving them hanging and with certain situations. It might be very challenging to know exactly when you would be back on board, but have a check in date. Say, this is when I’m going to check in with you. And then if that’s not going to be possible, if you, you’re not going to be able to kick back off again, then, then communicate again. It’s okay. It’s okay to do that.

Don: It’s absolutely okay. And I love that Kris said have a check-in date and even I would buffer it out even a little bit further and have a, I aim to get back to you on this date and then pop it in your diary. So you need to pop your CEO hat on.

Even in times of crisis. It’s really, really important to be systemized and to have some scripts on the ready. But also to have, a process on the ready. So we’ve got you on both of those areas, but we’ll talk about the scripts in a little bit. But the first thing is to give them date you are aiming to be back, then pop that date immediately in your diary so that then when that day comes, and if, you know, if things are still pear shaped, all you have to do is say, I promised I’m touching base, but I’m not back on board yet.

The new revised date is X, so that they’re always in the loop. They are always knowing what’s going on in terms of their business. Yeah, that’s the little paradigm shift. They just want to know how it affects them, right? They, and they’re probably beautiful people who are worried and concerned for you, but the reality is business to business.

They’re thinking, what’s, what’s the impact of this timeout going to have on my business? So as long as we’re making them feel really safe and assuring them that you’ve got this in hand, then that’s all they need to know.

Kris: Yeah. And if anything that the last few years has taught us is that things can shift and change.

Deadlines can change, business models can change everything is quite fluid. And ’cause you might be thinking, oh no, they’re, we’re not going to make that deadline. That’s really important deadline. But people are more adaptable and flexible than you think. So like Don said, communicate what is happening to the best of your ability. And if you don’t put a really hard and fast, like I’ll be back now, you know, like that, that will give you that flexibility as well. But make sure you keep checking in. Checking in. And. That’s the bare minimum.

Really like that. That’s okay. Even in the most terrible situations, you should be able to communicate some basic messages to clients, especially if you get out ahead of it and have this sort of thing prepped and ready before a situation happens.

Don: We love having scripts ready because what it does is a pre-prepared script when you are centered and grounded and in a beautiful frame of mind, means that your response will be centered and grounded and clear, and you won’t be in that turmoil. That happens when emotions are heightened or illness has taken over and you can’t even think straight.

And or there’s just so much chaos going on that it’s, it’s wobbly, really wobbly. So if all we have to do is lean on a system rather than create the system when things go pear shaped, then that’s a lot easier than articulating all of these things into a nice, concise email in the time, in the eye of the storm.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Don: So get out ahead of it. We have our nicely said scripts kit, which has a whole section on client relationships, and we’ve got some really spectacular scripts there ready to go for you to adapt and implement into a system for your business.

Kris: Yeah. Think of it like insurance. Yeah. You know, we, we have to have it, but we hope we never have to use it.

Yeah. And these are also things that if you have it in place as a system, you could get other people to do it too. So even it’s like, mom, go and get that. You know, go and send that email. It’s in this document, just like, you know.

Yeah. You could get somebody else to do it for you. But just with our nicely said scripts kit, we have 40 different scripts, but we’ve got quite a few around this topic when things go bad. Yeah. And you need to communicate it to a client.

Don: Yeah. Some of them include like when you need to change an appointment time.

Kris: Yeah. ’cause even that can feel icky.

Don: Yeah. Because the things have gone haywire in your business or things have gone haywire in your personal life and you have to move at an appointment time rather than getting flustered and freaking out about how it’s going to land for the client.

Having a beautifully measured script ready to go. It’s just so much easier. Yeah. The next one in our client relationship section is when you are experiencing a significant personal crisis and you need to book current projects on pause it’s a great script for you to confidently pause.

Kris: One of our scripts is a caring response to a client who is going through their own personal crisis. Because that can throw you as well, like, oh my goodness, I dunno what to say to this poor client of mine. And you know, it’s best to get out ahead of these things before you’re in a reactive state.

Don: Yes. That’s it. It’s being proactive rather than reactive. That’s what scripts are all about. So there’s lots more in there as well.

So if you haven’t got your hands on our nicely set scripts kit, do yourself a favor and and grab that, and that’ll have you on all ready to go. The key is don’t ghost your clients. Don’t go into avoidance, don’t hide because. All clients want is to know what’s going on. They want to understand what’s happening for their business and they want to really understand the momentum that’s happening around their project. That’s it. That’s all they want to know. They want to feel safe and secure in your hands.

Kris: Hopefully that’s helpful for everybody, not just this beautiful person who asked this question. And you know, things do happen in our lives.And, and it’s not always okay that these things happen, but we know that we’ve got a system to back ourselves and back our business so that it can keep on thriving. When you’re ready to get back into it, it’ll be all systems go.

Don: Yeah. Absolutely. Be unapologetic about life happening.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Don: You know, it’s okay. So make sure there’s not lots of ’Sorry’ in there.

Kris: I was going to say that actually just before we go, you know, even in those emails, like, oh, I’m so sorry. So sorry. Yeah. It could be just, thank you. Thank you so much for your patience.

Don: Love it. Love that so much. So beautiful designers. This is our q and a spot and we would love to hear your questions.

So if you could just head to our website, design and prosper.co/podcast. There’s an audio option there. We love the audio. You know that by now or just a spot to fill in a form and send us your question. You can be completely anonymous. You don’t have to tell us who you are, but we love hearing from you and we love hearing who you are.

So let us know whatever you have burning for you at the moment? What are those questions that you would love us to, to answer in a quickie and we’ll happily answer it right here.

Kris: Yeah. What’s on your mind? Yeah. Come on, tell us. Okay, everybody.

Don: Bye.

Kris: Bye.