Web News: When Clients Ignore Your Advice

As web dev agency owners, we have lots of frustrations and I ran into one, I've been running into one, I should say over and over and over again, and this goes across multiple clients, although there's some that are particularly bad in this particular area.

I'm not going to name anyone or anything like that.

You know, I understand that we're all different and everything, but it is when somebody absolutely 100% stone walls you with no data, nothing.

It's just a stubborn conversation topic, whatever, Mike and I just recorded an episode on bottlenecks, which will come out in the near future.

And one of the bottlenecks that I mentioned at the end of the episode is that if you have this big project, but you know, as an agency owner, you don't own the site that you're producing for somebody.

That person that you're producing the site for might say, you know, this website has to have music on it, blaring at full volume.

They might dig in and be like, that's it.

Like that's going to be the best SEO possible.

And you can come to them with data, information, other opinions, UX testing.

It doesn't matter.

They're just stonewalling you into this is the only reason why or this is the thing they need.

This is the reason why and they won't come off of that particular thing.

And so in my particular case, I have a few people where they're I would almost call it an addiction to organic SEO.

And that is that there are organic SEO has maxed out at a certain point.

We've had experts beyond me because I'm not a I'm the generalist.

So we've had experts come in.

We've had people come in who are experts on, you know, schemas and they look at the schema data.

We got people that come in and they're looking at the titles, they're looking at the performance.

They got all these things.

You got people that are trying to build authority and they're trying to get backlinks and everything else.

And we have all these things that all culminate together into the pie that is organic SEO.

And unfortunately, not every well-made pie in the world is going to be the best pie.

There is, you know, the best.

There's going to be imperfections in almost anything, if not everything.

And we have people that are like drill down on the SEO, drill down on the SEO, get that SEO sorted, figure out the SEO.

The problem is the SEO.

And I will, you know, come to them with data.

I will come to them with opinions.

I will come to them with suggestions.

And it's always I'm not moving on anything else until we get the SEO sorted.

Or if I do move on it, I'll look at it a little bit, but really I know, quote unquote, that the problem is the SEO.

Is the SEO perfect?

Absolutely not.

They're small business.

Usually I deal with a lot of small businesses, medium businesses, small business.

So of course, it's not going to be perfect.

You could hire someone, I'm sure, better than me.

Of course, you know, for a million dollars to to your SEO and be there daily.

Of course, however, we've brought experts in and I've been on the call with those experts.

And they'll be like, I suggest you change this like three character thing, man.

Like at this scale, like this is, this is about the best you're going to get.

And so today's web news is going to be about those kind of stone walled stubborn conversations, those roadblocks.

If you will, even bottlenecks, if we want to relate it to that other episode that we just recorded.

But those issues that you have with clients, because we will care from other web dev agency owners.

Or amongst ourselves, Mike and I will have a conversation occasionally where it's like.

At what point do we just say this product, like we're out on this project.

At what point do we just say this is just, you know, sort of the customer is always right.

And this is just customer service and you're never going to please everybody 100%.

Some people are just not going to be happy with, you know, anything or everything.

Mike, why don't you take it away?

I've been talking for a while.

What your initial thoughts on this sort of like stone wall stubborn conversation type.

Yeah, this is a frustrating topic for me because it bleeds not just into professional but personal stuff.

I have a hard time with stone walled conversations.

I'm not much of a traditional debater.

I feel like, you know, debate team type people would maybe deal better with this kind of stuff.

But for me, if someone kind of gives up on the stats and the numbers, I'm almost out of that conversation.

And I just don't want to even talk to them about anything relating to that conversation anymore.

You know, politics related, you know, family related, whatever, it doesn't matter.

If people are in that sense, then like, I just, I can't, I can't deal with it.

I have a really hard time dealing with people like that.

So my, you know, internal advice that I take myself is that I just distance myself from that situation.

And in this particular case with like a client doing that, sometimes it's hard.

Like, you know, if the client's paying you a good amount of money, then sometimes you just have to, you know, appease them regardless of the situation.

Like we've had to do that many times where, you know, we know we're probably right, but the client is wrong.

But the client is the one that's paying us and he's making a decision.

So as long as we, you know, I would really tell them our opinion and why we think that way.

And they reject it and we recorded somewhere, then it's okay.

Like at that, at that point, we, you can still, you know, do action on the items that they need to action on and move forward with your life without having to argue with them.

Right. But the problem is that those client relationships are usually things that are eventually going to, going to blow up.

Because if their opinion is that you're wrong and you continue down that path of trying to counteract them.

And no matter what you do, because let's say the SEO stuff that we're talking about.

No matter what you do, if they don't go away from that aspect, their site will probably fail.

Because if they think it's SEO and it's not SEO, then they're not going to be focusing on the things that actually matter.

And therefore their site will fail and they'll blame you.

Because they're going to, they're going to still come back to the fact that it's SEO at the end of the day.

So regardless of the situation, yes, you have to appease the client.

But at some point, you need to start distancing yourself if they're not willing to listen to reason.

And distancing yourself could mean, you know, starting to transition away from them, finding another client to fill their role or just say no.

Just being like, hey, this relationship isn't working.

You're not listening to me.

It's not sounding like you're happy with the service that we're providing.

Maybe we can go our separate ways.

You can find someone that can maybe find, you know, the thing that's wrong with your site.

You don't have to be a dick about it.

You don't have to, you know, make a big deal about it.

It's just, I don't see a reason if you have the ability to get out of the situation.

I don't see a reason to continue down that path because it's frustrating for you.

It's frustrating for the client.

It's frustrating for the product that you're building.

It's frustrating probably for the users of the product.

Like it's just, it's just bad all around.

I have a hard time justifying those arguments.

This is a weird personal thing, but I used to get all fired up about this type of stuff.

And it's still a little flame inside of my gut, like where it burns for this type of stuff.

It still triggers me.

Golf has taught me to be quite stoic.

And so thank the fam thankful for that, I guess, because I can deal with the conversations.

I can have the constant phone calls, you know, to an extent where the person's constantly calling about SEO.

They're constantly calling about this, that or the other thing.

And there's, I do want to get, like, not necessarily play devil's advocate, but there is some part of it that becomes a bit of an issue between the two, which is almost almost a commission, which is.

Let's say the client is constantly bugging you about SEO.

And you think that their content is bad or they need to make a certain type of content.

And you go to them and you, now you sound like a broken record, because you're constantly telling them to make, I don't know, TikToks.

Let's just say, make TikToks, man, they're like, do the SEO, man, no, you do the TikToks, man, no, you do the SEO.

And then it becomes that.

And that becomes a problem.

And I could see them, meaning from the client's perspective, being like, man, Matt is like a one, a one trick pony.

He's just constantly telling me to do TikToks.

And I just want him to fix his SEO.

And, you know, I'm coming in hot from the other side.

And I'm being like, dude, SEO is fixed.

The SEO is fine.

Do TikToks.

And it's this constant, you know, back and forth, back and forth, bit of a human issue there.

But I 100% agree with Mike, where unfortunately, you know, maybe my advice is a one trick pony, because I am an expert to some extent.

And I think that that's the missing piece.

If I'm stuck on something like that, I honestly think that that's the missing piece.

It'd be like someone invents a car and the tires are square.

And I'm sitting there dying on the hill that they should be round.

Because that's the missing piece.

That's why it doesn't roll nicely, right?

And that is a very difficult conversation.

It's very frustrating, as Mike said.

It's very angering.

I think I've learned to control that.

I'm less passionate these days.

But I think there's some key things that you can take away on when to deal with the situation.

You're not going to like everybody that you work for.

They're not going to like everything you do.

And in fact, they may be a person that likes nothing.

But they might like you enough to keep you around and, you know, they're paying your bills and things.

And that's fine.

But we've had to dump clients.

And usually what ends up happening is if you look at your career trajectory.

If you look at, in our case, our web dev agency performance.

And in my case, my sleep usually is what suffers.

If it starts to derail things consistently outside of its own wheelhouse,

meaning it's outside of that one website outside of their project.

If it starts to derail all your sleep.

It starts to derail your other relationships with people.

It starts to make you question, I mean, I don't know if I should be in here doing this.

Like, maybe I don't know what I'm doing with my SEO knowledge or something like that.

Then my advice is to consider taking action.

In other words, maybe no longer working with them.

As Mike said, having a more deep conversation with them about it.

If you really want to, it depends.

Because some people will get close with their clients and be more friends than, than, you know, co-workers.

But I really do think that you have to take a look at what it's doing.

And we've had, and it's not just SEO.

Like, we've had people come to us where they have a budget of a certain amount.

And you try to explain to them that if they scale to a certain point,

the budget has to increase and they don't listen.

And then, of course, what starts happening.

You start having website problems, the things crashing.

It's not booting up correctly.

It's not it's slow.

It's bad performance.

You can't find, you know, hosting for that budget, for that amount of computational power that you need.

And it's a big mess.

And so that's like almost like a, instead of it being like more of a technical SEO kind of like web dev agency deals with this.

It starts becoming like a business problem.

That one feels like it has a, at least to me, has a much more cut and dry line.

Where it starts to be, this is starting to take $1,000 worth of worker hours.

And I'm making 500.

So I'm out.

There's like a, there's like clear metric there.

And then, and those things can start doing, start affecting you the other way as well.

Start affecting your sleep, start affecting, making you super stressed out, start making you question your skills and things like that.

Why can't I make this thing work under this budget?

I think once it starts to affect your, your trajectory in a, in a negative way,

you need to start self-reflecting and see if you're being too easy on yourself.

Maybe you do have some skills that need to improve.

But if you truly believe that this person is just in a movable wall.

And you, you know, if you were running their company, you would do better.

And you have a lot of evidence towards it.

Maybe you have a lot of expertise in the industry.

And you've worked for tons of other people.

And this is the one troublesome person.

I think it's, it's time to consider ending or modifying the business relationship at that point.

That's, that would be my, my perspective.

Because we've stayed in relationships for too long that have been like,

having an annoying phone call once a week might not derail you.

That's fine.

You know, okay, that person's paying you.

It's not derailing you.

The amount of money you're making is enough.

Again, not everyone's going to be happy with your work to 100, 100% of the time.

Okay.

Right.

You're not going to have a totally smooth client relationship with everybody.

But if it starts becoming problematic to you as like a person or as a professional.

Personally, that's when I start to look at it and go, what do we do here now?

I, I think there's, there's this weird thing that will happen as well.

Like, think best case scenario with a client like that.

Right.

Let's think best case scenario.

You don't believe their content is good enough.

Your suggestion is to create better content, create different varying content,

TikTok, YouTube, whatever.

The reality is, if they're, they're dug in on one thing,

maybe at some point they're going to listen to you.

There's a chance best case scenario.

That's why I'm saying best case scenario.

Maybe at some point they're going to listen to you.

What's going to happen in that case?

Is there going to put probably a low effort approach to whatever you're suggesting?

Because they're not fully invested in that opportunity.

They just think it's something that, you know, they just have to check a box to move past.

Right.

And most likely what's going to end up happening is it's not going to work.

Because it's a low effort.

It's a first time thing and to, to get any traction with TikTok or YouTube,

you're talking months, years, sometimes, right?

Like it's not a, you know, one and done type thing.

But what's going to happen with this kind of client is they're going to do a one and done deal.

Show you that, hey, look, I made this TikTok.

It did nothing.

And then they're going to go back to you with the whole SEO thing.

That's the, in my opinion, best case scenario, which is bad.

That's a bad case scenario.

Right.

Like there is no way around that because unless they're passionate about making this content,

it's going to fail.

Yep.

Period.

And they're not obviously not passionate about making this content.

So they're being forced into it.

And they're going to blame you for the wasting their time.

So in a best case scenario, you will be blamed for wasting their time

and probably be back at bashing your head against the SEO wall in this particular situation.

Those kinds of things should be a very clear indicator about like,

hey, this is not going to work out.

In my opinion, like again, I just, I don't see, I don't see any path to success

in that type of relationship.

Yes.

Honestly, you like really hit the nail on the head there because we've absolutely had this

where it's a really good point that I didn't think of it's

they reluctantly follow your advice.

And they work because they're reluctance, because of their reluctance,

they're, they're low effort.

And because it's low effort, it doesn't get the results that you said it would.

And therefore you're wrong and they're right.

It is the SEO, you know, look, you know, let's tick-tock things socks, man.

What did you do?

Well, I spent five minutes with an AI and I generated three images.

And then I spoke, you know, on a microphone that was, you know,

from the front lines of 1915.

And you know, no one could hear me.

And there was a whole bunch of noise in the background.

And I kept saying, um, literally every other word.

And the script was kind of messed up.

And there was a lot of dead air.

You know, all these problems that they don't think of.

But you listen to it and you're like, oh, man.

Oh, I had a similar problem with somebody that started a podcast.

And I don't work professionally in podcasts like assistants.

But I'd work with them for a long time.

And they asked me for help.

And just as kind of like as a friendly gesture.

And I said, sure.

So I went over there and they said, give me some advice.

And I told them what, what would I do?

And I was like, you'd be clear.

I'm not in the, you know, the top percent of their podcasts.

You know, I'm not.

So my advice is for kind of like small business podcast kind of thing.

And they said, yeah, no problem.

Whatever.

They took zero, zero percent of the advice, zero percent.

And immediately we're like, this is garbage.

Now, thankfully, they didn't blame me.

Uh, but they really could have.

Or maybe they did in private and they were too nice to say it.

But it was like, man, you didn't follow a thing.

There are some of their podcast episodes were 35 seconds.

Perfect.

35 seconds, not 35 minutes, not a minute, 35 seconds.

And I told them, this is a TikTok thing, man.

This is a YouTube short.

This is an Instagram reel.

This is, you know, throw a bit of graphics on there and maybe have an audio

program, at least.

This is what this is.

This is a shot of information.

Maybe it's great for their niche.

Put this on short form reels and that type of thing.

This is what this is podcast can be shorter, like 15 minutes.

It could be fine.

35 seconds.

You know, Buddha is going to take you longer to get my freaking Spotify to,

you know, to cast to my speaker that I used to listen to podcast.

And then to hear like, all right, everybody, this is the web news.

And okay, thanks everybody for tuning in.

Use your, you know, it's just silly.

Like just what, what are you doing?

And yeah, that's a very good point, Mike.

I feel my stomach sink when you said it because I've experienced this several times.

It, it sucks.

And that might be a time to leave, too, where it's just, I think, man,

like I just can't help this person.

You know what's funny, too?

It's like, I hear this thing where like the customer is always right.

It's kind of as a closing note.

The customer is always right thing.

And that's kind of being debunked in today's culture.

I don't want to get into that.

The idea though is that you obviously want to keep your customers happy,

even if they're kind of grumpy people.

I get it because you're not going to always have, you know, an ideal relationship with them.

The thing, the thing is though, is you have to take into account like your own feelings.

You have to take into account your own goals as well.

Like, is this customer assisting you in your goals?

Is this customer assisting you financially?

If that's, if you have a financial goal, is this customer like, you know, pushing your skills?

Like a difficult client might actually make you better at your, at your job.

And you don't want to be too easy on yourself, right?

But sometimes you have to say, you know what, I'm out of here.

And other trades do this, too.

And I think that people forget that because if I go to like my age fat guy,

and I'm like, yo, man, like hook the gas up like this.

He's not going to do that if it's against code.

And like, is that is now I'm mad?

Customers always right. Do it like this.

Hey, man, you know, you can't hook up the natural gas like that.

Your house is going to catch on fire or whatever.

I'll be like, no, man, just do it.

Like just, just do it.

And in tech, you know, we kind of can sometimes just do it, especially if it's front end

because it's like, well, this is going to have bad UX, but it's not a security problem.

And you know, at the end of the day, it's not a big issue.

It just looks bad or it's weird to click through.

And so sometimes we will kind of eat that.

But there are trades out there.

There are other jobs out there where they will straight up say, no.

And banks are another one.

I can go in there and be like, bank, you know, my stuff like this.

And they'll be like, what are you doing?

Like, that's against the law.

Like, no, we don't bank like that here in Canada.

We bank like this.

They're not going to try to please the customer 100%.

They can't.

They can try.

They could be courteous.

But when those skills run out, maybe it's time to run or take an action, get the heck out of there.

A peaceful action.

I would like to say a peaceful action.

Yeah, there's no reason to blow up a relationship.

You know, because you never know the person might change at some point down the line, but it's okay to step away.

And do it peacefully.

Do it nicely.

Do it professionally.

They might recommend you to someone else in the future.

Like, just ships don't work out for some reasons.

But usually if you can end them peacefully, it'll benefit both parties.

So yeah, I think that's a really good point to end on them.

But like, just keep an eye out for that.

This is a really important lesson to learn in your, you know, freelancing or, you know, agency career.

Not an easy one.

And it happens in agencies.

It happens in corporations.

It happens everywhere.

It happens in regular life.

Like I said at the beginning, like where you just run into people that you can't not.

You cannot, you cannot convince you're too far apart.

This might be the wrong approach.

I like to step away from those situations because I don't have time to deal with that shit.

And I don't have the patience.

But like, yeah, it's, it's tough.

Definitely a tough, like, like we were, we were debating not doing this web news because we knew it was going to be frustrating.

And it might become ranty.

And I, I think we, I mean, obviously I'm biased, but I think we did a good job of just kind of keeping it objective.

Because this is a frustration that agency owners, people that are customer facing in web development.

And then outside of web development as well are definitely going to face.

And hopefully, you know, some of the words here helped you out if they did.

And you're a listener or a watcher or a viewer, more specifically, you'll get that joke.

If you listen to the bottleneck episode, the bottleneck full length episode.

Which is going to come out after this one.

So it's, it's a real inside joke.

Well, then subscribe and listen, you know, there you go.

But no, if you, you know, if you want to share a customer story or you have any other things like you, like, hey, Matt Mike, you know, you should try this to get people off of stubborn choices.

Let us know, please in the comments, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere else, pod bean, anywhere else where you can leave a comment.

We'd love to hear and learn from you.

And I think that's it.

That's the web news for this week.

Hope you enjoyed.

Goodbye.