How to Handle Client Conflict Like a Pro While Keeping Your Reputation & Sanity

If you've ever found yourself in a dumb conflict with a client and thought, "How did we even get here?", this episode is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, and today we're talking about what every business owner eventually learns the hard way: conflict is inevitable, but chaos is optional. Whether it's a client with unrealistic expectations or a misunderstanding that spirals out of control, we've learned that managing it well is what separates the pros from the amateurs.

In this episode, we share our real world framework for managing conflict with high-paying clients (the same one we teach in our mastermind for custom clothiers.) You'll learn how to protect your sanity, your reputation, and your profit margins all at once.

Highlights

00:00 How humor keeps business conflicts from feeling heavy.

02:30 Why perspective matters more than perfection in leadership.

05:00 Discover what jury duty can teach you about clients.

09:30 Recognize early signs of conflicts before they escalate.

11:30 Why conflict is a normal part of growth.

14:00 Master the art of responding fast without reacting emotionally.

16:30 How to document to protect your business and reputation.

19:00 Discover which communication method keeps clients calm and clear.

22:00 Word-for-word strategies to de-escalate conflict through email.

25:00 Learn how to keep the tone human in written messages.

28:00 When a quick phone call can save a client.

31:00 Use "two-option" solutions to turn frustration into collaboration.

34:00 Evaluate every conflict to strengthen systems and boundaries.

36:30 The clear formula for conflict-free growth.

Resources + Links

Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind HERE

More resources for custom clothiers HERE

Watch on Youtube

Follow

Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Resources + Links
Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind  HERE
More resources for custom clothiers HERE
Watch on Youtube

 Follow
Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Mike's camera action. Nice. And lights. We have lights here. Mike's lights. Mike and Ike's. Mike and Ike's. This is brought to you by Mike and Ike. When was the last time you had a Mike and Ike?

SPEAKER_01 0:16

What were you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

You have to say that slow. I know you gotta be really careful when you say that. Mike and Dyke and Ike. Mike and Ike. What were the flavors of those? I don't even know. Were they red? I think I liked the red ones. That was like a movie theater exclusive. Yeah. You don't go to a store and for candy and buy Mike and Ike's. That's why I feel like it's a really old-timey candy. I like butterscotches. Butterscotch or uh bit of honeys. Remember mom really liked bitto honeys? Those are so gross. Those things would get stuck in my teeth and you know, would just never leave. Yeah. And Whopper. No, not Whoppers. What was the other one? Milk Duds. Milk Duds. I like milk duds. Well, yeah, I like the taste, but again, I at some point you want to be done eating them. And then when they're stuck in your teeth, they just don't move. True. Those things are tough. Favorite movie candy for me would be uh some sort of an MM. I'm trying to decide which kind, but I'm conflicted. Remember the MM, was it crunch? Crunch MMs? I do they were short-lived. Do they not they don't have I feel like they only lasted about as long as 3D Doritos did? Oh, those were good too. 3D Doritos were awesome. I could I could absolutely house Doritos. Like normal Doritos. Any at this at this point, any Dorito. Oh, and at this point in your life, your chip of choice would also be Dorito. Well, I'm not picky, but Doritos, uh potato chips. I get those potato chips, uh, boulder brand that are they're you know, they're really healthy. They're cooked in avocado. Avocado oil. Yeah. Yeah, I get those. And I'm not picky. Ridges, thin and crispy, you name it. I'll buy it. And the thing is, I can definitely do it in a sitting. Oh, yeah. It's not hard to eat an entire bag of chips in one sitting. I remember I was working uh at the fruit stand. Oh God. Which hasn't hasn't come up really in conversation quite yet. I used to work at a roadside produce tent. That was my college job. It was an awesome job. And it was right next to a gas station. And so when I would get hungry, it would be gas station food. Obviously, it was a more of a blue-collar job than a white-collar job. Uh so we had the we had the gas station diet, and I remember getting a full bag of Cheetos, eating the entire thing, and then just throwing up. Immediately throwing, like it was at like my the last and you just had had handfuls of Cheetos, not one Cheeto at a time. Who's got the time for that? So last handful went down, and immediately it was like I threw up into my produce garbage. Oh. What happened? You were just I just ate too many Cheetos. Chester the Cheetos is the good news is then I could have more later. Oh have you had Cheetos since then? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, that didn't. I they didn't make me sick. Cheetos used to be the thing that I would get at when we would go to Blimpies as a as kids. Blimpies, that wasn't a big chain. I feel like there's a lot of regulars out there who are saying Blimpy's, what's that? It's like the uh Walmart version of Subway. It was better than Subway. I liked it more. And they had PETA's, which was, you know, pitas are healthy. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Just like everything at Subway is healthy. It was a confusing time for nutrition when we would be at Blimpy's. I remember thinking no matter what I ate, because it was from Blimpy's, it's healthy. So I'm gonna get a pita and I'm gonna get Cheetos and I'm gonna get a macadamia nut cookie. Yeah, and that was when Subway was just bragging all about Jared, too. Yeah, think what happened. Things change changed. This is Appointment Only, the podcast for entrepreneurs building profitable, high-end businesses. If you want control, profit, and freedom from the endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, twin brothers from day one and business partners for 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences running a high-end small business, the highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build businesses you enjoy running that aren't running you. We're here to help you continue creating businesses that support the life you actually want to live. Your appointment starts now. Today we want to talk about conflict management with people who spend a lot of money to work with you. But before we dive into that, we want to set the stage. We want to set the stage and just let there be a general acknowledgement of something before we dive in. That thing, and we mean this as respectfully as we can mean it, people are dumb. People are dumb. And not you, of course. You're probably listening to this and you're like, absolutely that's true. And that's the funny thing about that reality is that most everyone agrees with it, yet somehow most people are dumb. We we were together, the two of us, we were both on jury duty a couple of summers ago, which is stupid in and of itself. Speaking of things that are dumb, they should have taken one look at the two of us and said, Okay, you're both dismissed. Well, and they always say they're there every time they're I mean, if you've ever been on jury duty, you know, you know how it goes, but you all show up in the morning and there's like a cattle call and you're sh filed into this room. You're paying $40 to park. What did they give you like nine dollars at the end of it? It's honestly, it's so inhumane, the kind of the way they treat you on jury duty, but they make you watch the same movie every single morning, and it basically is saying how you have all been randomly selected to blah blah blah. It's so random. They're saying the word randomly selected, they keep saying it. Yeah, random selection. They say it so many times that you just know that there's nothing random about it. And it's not random because if it was random, there you think. I mean, think about that. We Danny and I were on jury duty at the same time. They claim it's completely random. For Hennepin County, right? Not not just not for some small city inside. It's like for the entire county, we both got summoned for the same period of time. What are the odds that this random selection process out of and he was the only one I knew in the whole room of every single person that could have been called, that the other person I knew in the room happened to be Danny? So it's not random. We ended up getting called to the same trial, the same jury selection process. So it was us and I want to say 25 other people, maybe 26 other people. I think there were 30 total at that point. So it would have been, you know, 28 additional people. So they're asking you all the questions, just sort of the qualifying questions based on the case that they're gonna have. Speaking of people are dumb. One of the questions was does anybody have any ill will towards uh police in general? And nobody. Everyone was like, no, I'm not me. I'm totally unbiased, totally cool. And that's what they were getting at because this was a case involving uh law enforcement in some capacity. Nobody said anything. And then they start talking about something different. Uh, I believe it was violence and sir and surgeries, something like that. And this one lady says, Well, I actually recently had surgery because I was shot by a police officer. And everyone's looking around, including you can see the attorneys like looking at themselves. So why didn't you answer the question? They're the judge asked. So when we said if you had any ill will about the police, how come you didn't raise your hand? She said, Oh, because I forgot. I forgot. But it turns out she hated the police. What was it? Did she get shot in the head? Straight through the memory lobe. Anyway, um, but in jury uh selection, one of the questions, one of the qualifying questions was raise your hand if you feel as though you have common sense. 30 hands, every single person raise their hands. And I'm looking around, including including that lady, including the lady who got shot by the cops and totally forgot. I'm looking around and it's like I I have been on this earth for too many years to think that 30 out of 30 adults have common sense. I absolutely people are dumb. Being on jury duty is miserable, and I hate it, and you probably will will hate it too. And it also, as though there wasn't enough reason not to commit a crime that would put you on a jury trial, it absolutely makes me think, well, now I for sure am never gonna go to a jury trial. Because if I had a room of those types of people deciding my fate, no thank you. We both got called in, just the two of us, with the judge and the attorneys. And we were we knew exactly what this was. Well, everyone on jury duty was laughing too, because everybody knew we were twins. It was like no secret. And so we we knew we were about to get dismissed. This was on like day two. We're feeling pretty good about this. So we sit down and we're you know, we're pretty confident. I think I know what this is about, Judge Judge Daniel. Uh I know what this is all about. And one of the attorneys was like, So are either of you related to, and then the judge or the attorney says a name? No. Are you sure? Yeah. I don't know if it was because we have police officer haircuts or what the deal. I was wearing my police officer uniform.

unknown 10:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Kenny was impersonating a police officer at the time. I rode my uh I rode my cop car. Your little cars. Yeah. But it turns out they just wanted to make sure that neither of us were related to somebody involved in the case. And then they sent us right back out, and then we had to go back and finish the jury selection. For days, we we were let both of us were released after a week of jury selection. And honestly, we were trying to get released, and and you have to you we found out in that jury selection they wanted somebody who had really strong feelings about the police. We just didn't know which way. Exactly. So we didn't know what to say. I was bleeding blue, admittedly. I was all about if the if the police say it, I am on board with it. And if the police tell tell me that the that the sky is is yellow, I believe it. That is not what they wanted to hear. No, I got dismissed. Case dismissed. And then there were many other people who were walking a much finer line, and they ended up on the jury. This is what I'm gonna say next time. I'm in a room on jury selection. They say five years will go by before you get called again. Next time I get called, I'm gonna say, listen, here's what I'm gonna do if I'm on a jury. I'm just gonna, I'm not, I'm just gonna vote whichever way everyone's gonna vote. I'm not gonna use my brain. If we're about to uh sentence the person to the death penalty and I think he's innocent, I'm gonna go with it because I gotta get back to work. Guilty. Guilty. Let's move on. He actually did it to me. Let's go home. Yep, I'm in. I'm in. Case closed. People are dumb. Is that a mean thing to say? People are dumb. Well, no, because everybody agrees with it. And we are not, we are not belittling or talking down about any of you regulars because as we say, people are dumb. As we say people are dumb, you have all sorts of examples that you're coming up with on your own. But for whatever reason, everybody knows that. Everybody thinks they have common sense, yet somehow all of us business owners end up in these stupid conflicts with people because common sense is lacking, it seems. And sometimes the conflicts are legitimate, but oftentimes it's like, hello, what are you thinking? Yeah, what's going on? What yeah, why are we even having this? Like literally, I don't know what the thought process is to get us to the point where we're in this conflict. And that's the problem. So let's talk about what you should do when you're in conflict with a customer or a client, probably a customer. Chances are you're not going to want to have a long relationship with someone who's conflict driven. We all know those people too, who thrive on conflict. Oh, yeah, they love it. Love, love putting up a fuss. So assuming, assuming that's not you, and assuming you're running a business because you have a business to run, it is inevitable, unfortunately, that you're going to be in situations that you have to manage a conflict with someone, and sometimes it's your fault, and a lot of times it probably isn't your fault, but it doesn't matter because you're in the situation. So the first thing to keep in mind, and this has saved us so many times, the more quickly you can respond, the better. Speedy response. Because oftentimes when people are reaching out to a company, they they're not expecting to hear from anyone. They're expecting either it for it to just totally be ignored, never to hear anything ever, or they're expecting some sort of a response many days later from a robot. And here's the thing, too, about a quick response. And I'm not saying an immediate response. And I you should not respond immediately. Do not do that. We'll get into that. A quick response because people who are conflict driven or who are upset about things, time makes it worse. They use that time to snowball their emotions and to build, build the frustration. And sometimes just hearing something from you or from a person is enough to talk them off the ledge that they've walked out onto. It kind of feels like for us, it almost feels like about half the time. Half the time, just the fact that we respond within, you know, 24 hours or so puts that person completely back to a level-headed place. But not all the time. Unfortunately, it's not 100% of the time. So, because people's expectation is that they're never going to hear anything, and if even if they do hear something, it's not going to be from a real person. If you can respond to that to the person who has the conflict or the issue in a somewhat reasonable time frame, generally speaking, that's going to go a huge distance for you. Now, if you're dealing with someone in a conflict, my advice to you, and this is the advice I give to all of the custom clothiers in our mastermind, it's one of the first pieces of advice, actually, that we talk about get a paper trail. And not just to use for conflict. I really think most business owners should have a paper trail in however they're talking to their clients or their customers, because it's really helpful to be able to look back at information that was talked about. And not only is it helpful if you end up in a conflict, but it but it's helpful as you grow your business too. Because as your business grows, let's say you bring somebody else onto the team, there are going to be times where you have to, where you have to forward communication or other people have to have eyes on things as well. So it's not the best move to be doing all of your business communications on the phone. Because not only will you not have a paper trail, but that isn't necessarily setting you up to be able to grow down the road either. Who's a good phone talker? Because you're not. I'm not. And I'm not either. But there are people who love to be on the phone. Who's who do you think is better between you and me being on the phone, you or me? Well, it depends on the situation. I'm not going to get rude on the phone. But I also am going to hang up and say, ah, I should have said this. This is the problem with the two of us, is neither of us can multitask. So if one of us is on the phone, I think, you know, maybe this is just an inflated sense of self, but I think I'm a little bit better at receiving information while I'm on the phone and being able to work it into the conversation. Sure. I think that's from my years being a TV broadcaster, hearing my producer talk in my ear while I'm on live TV. I'm able to do that. You, on the other hand, no offense, are trash. Yeah, I'm horrible. I I can't read something. Like Kenny will often I'll be on the phone with somebody, he'll be like typing out to notes. Yeah. And it's I'm not even gonna look at it. I I can't. I that's I'm I'm my brain isn't wired that way. It's hard. So I get it. And it is hard, and it's it's it takes a a million percent of my focus when I'm on the phone. So it's really hard for me to to accept incoming information aside from what I'm talking about. I can't imagine having saying even this and having somebody talking in my ear. Yeah, it's not great. What would they say to you? Put your wiener back in your pants. We could see your hands. Kenny, your wiener fell out again. I only heard that one a couple times. But it I mean, it would be like they'd be counting down to break, or they'd be saying, you know, move on, go to the next story or something. Just like something really quick. Stop talking. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Something like that. So uh yes, that's usually what they were saying to me through my ear, earpiece. But it is uh it is hard to be on the phone. I think it's really hard. And I suck on the phone. So that's part of the reason why we primarily funnel our conversations through email, but it has proven time and time again to be the most beneficial because you have this sort of mutually understood idea that if you're in an email correspondence, you have some time to respond. I'm still gonna advise you respond as quickly as is reasonable, but I would also respond or recommend that you do not respond too quickly. The thing about emails, you have a little time, you can put it in a draft, you can have chat GPT help you make it more nice. Yeah, nobody's if if you are in email communication with somebody, nobody is expecting a same hour response. No. They're just that's not the expectation. So even if it takes 24 hours, oftentimes people are are surprised at how quickly they got a response from you, even if it took an entire day. Thanks for the quick response. Yeah, we hear that a lot. But if you think about the other forms of communication you could be talking through, whether that's on the phone, okay, shoot. Now you got to respond in real time. And you better, you both better remember what was said. That's the other problem that that's tough is who knows? It's if it's a he said, she said situation. If you're texting your client, there's a very, there's very much an active element to it, and there's an expectation that you're responding in relatively like minute to minute.

unknown 19:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Not real time, but minute to minute, as long as it takes you to type out a response. Instagram DMs, there's that read receipt. Yeah, people are watching. You can see when you're typing. So they know. Yeah, it's it's one of those things where any other form of communication we've found, it does require, and the expectations are I'm getting real, real responses real quickly. It doesn't matter if it's 9 p.m., I'm hearing something, where email, the general expectation is I hear something within a day, and I'm not going to hear anything after business hours. And if I do, it's a bonus. Bonus. And they're grateful. So even just in the form of communication you're using, you can actually blow someone's mind in a positive way. Let's talk about what to say. Okay, so let's assume that we're talking, there's a paper trail now. We've established that. Let's talk about what we're saying in this email. Sure. So somebody emails us and they're unhappy with a product. Hey, I got this and this thing is wrong. Well, too bad. Death penalty. Guilty. Yeah. Uh so I think the first thing is you, whatever the problem is, whether it's real or not, whether it's their fault or not, you do have to acknowledge their frustration. You don't, you do not have to apologize necessarily. However, if you if you screwed something up, you should. Absolutely. But whatever they're frustrated with, acknowledge it. So sorry that the product is wrong. What let's think of a product so we can use this example. Should we use something from our business? Sure. Okay, so let's say no, that doesn't work because we have face-to-face. Yeah, that's it's gonna be a little bit different. Let's just think of the let's think of the regulars, a business they might be in. Um, let's say it's a photographer. Okay. They received the album back from whatever they hired the photographer to do, and there are a number of pictures that they don't like. They don't like the phone. Okay, so there's some things they don't like. Yes. Got it. Okay. So not necessarily quote unquote wrong, right? Not necessarily your fault, but your your client, your customer isn't thrilled. So that's now a conflict you're dealing with. So sorry to hear that you're unhappy with those photos. Once you've acknowledged that, from there, it's important to acknowledge it so that they they understand that you hear them and that you you are hearing that they are frustrated or unhappy. Happy or it's not meeting expectations, whatever it is. From there, what we do is we dive into emotionless language and fact fact presenting mode. Now we've found that it's important to not be emotionless and not not sound like robots, but it's important to not allow emotions to drive the rest of this conversation. Because if you enter into a position where you're getting all worked up and you're getting defensive and and you're putting trying to put blame back on the on the client who's unhappy, there's nowhere to go but down from there. So if you can remain calm and keep a level head and move forward with, you know, presenting facts or or stating things that are objectively true or false, that's helpful. Keep it factual, keep it as unemotional and impersonal as you can. Right. This is just basically to neutralize it. And to take it out of emotion and to put it back into factual objectivity rather than subjectivity. I hope that's making sense. One really easy way to do this is to, as you're looking through your drafts, as you're putting emails together and you're looking through things, take the word you out. Take the word you out of this language and speak much more. You can dance around the word you, and you could even have Chat GPT help you with that. Type out a message and then put it through chat and say, please remove all language that has to do with you. Make this more more impersonal and nicer. Yeah, this is a this is a good use for Chat GPT at this point. Obviously, there's no shortage of ways to use AI, and certain industries are able to utilize it much more effectively and able to loop it into what they already do. But this communication with clients is a way to really, really be able to utilize chat GPT for what it can do right now, what it's great at now, and cleaning up language, making things flow, removing personalization and removing the word you, like you said, is important because then customers don't feel like you're talking directly at them. As someone who has a tendency to get defensive, and I do, and I'm sure there are many of us out there that can relate to this, that word you, it puts you on the defense. And if you're using that word in your communication with someone in a conflict, they're gonna get defensive. It is absolutely inevitable. So anything you can do that may help sort of calm things down and bring the temperature down is gonna be your best friend. Now, that being said, the other thing that's really important to keep in mind is communicating through email has pros and cons. The big con is that, and this is this is gonna be true of any time you're communicating with anyone. But one of the big cons with communicating through email is you're not able to communicate tone. And they are subject to read your words through whatever tone they want to assign to it. And oftentimes in the middle of a conflict, or if they have used any amount of time to get worked up to then contact you, they're probably gonna misinterpret the tone. Right. And there's just really nothing you can do. But I do really truly believe that the the pros of communicating through email, paper trail, being able to edit your words, multiple drafts far outweigh the cons. Really, the only con being, yeah, maybe they're not gonna read this through the right words. Here's how I know. Because there was recently a time we were we were emailing someone who we were working with, we were in a conflict. We've had a we've had a couple of conflicts in the last couple of months. It's been we don't deal with a lot of conflicts, but we deal with conflicts consistently, I would say. Yeah, it's not totally, I mean, it's we're often working through something any given week or month, there's something that's in somewhat active mode. And then sometimes it's a couple at a time, you know, and that always feels that always feels frustrating. But one thing that I thought was funny, which is a very good example of this, we're working with someone, there was a conflict. I, Danny calls it kermiting because there's that meme of Kermit going crazy on the top of the typewriter, and it's like there's smoke coming out of it. And so that's what I do. And I put I kermit for a while, and then I I ran it through Chat GPT and I said, make this nicer. I ran it through Chat GPT again, even nicer, and said, make it even nicer than that. And that's the version we sent. And she still read it wrong. She still was mad, she still thought it was rude, she still thought we were too direct, dismissive. Yeah. And you know, you think about it in terms of what you're writing, you can't control how they're actually gonna read it. If if you say, Have I hope you have a great rest of your weekend as you close out an email? If someone's reading that and they are giving you the benefit of the doubt and they're reading it with a friendly tone, they'll read it as, I hope you have a great rest of the weekend. It's gonna be beautiful. I hope you get outside and enjoy the sunshine. But if they're already mad at you and they already think you're an asshole and they're already reading it through a negative lens, they're gonna read that and they're gonna say, I hope you have a great rest of the weekend. And how dismissive. Yeah. Ugh. So annoyed by that. What I really always want to say is, I hope you have the day that you deserve to have. I know, if only we could. That's the that's what I want to say too. I actually would would love to say something else. Yeah, that's true. But you can't. But you know what I mean? It's things can get misinterpreted and doesn't matter how neutral the the words are that you say. But I'd rather be in a scenario where I said I said what I wanted to say and it was misinterpreted in my tone than having been on the phone and not been able to say what I needed to say. Absolutely. And here's the thing about being on the phone too: if you're communicating, there's a paper trail, you know, you've done everything right and you can tell, oh crap, this person completely is misreading everything I'm saying. They're reading every word angry. That's incorrect. There really is no harm to maybe hop on the phone quickly. Right. Let them hear your voice, let them hear your tone so that you can sort of reset, bring the temperature down, and then get off the phone as quickly as you can. Say, all right, I just wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to chat quickly. Let's get back and I will shoot you an email with my thoughts and then move forward that way. Sometimes you just need a little bit of a reset, but I would strongly advise you don't really get into it on the phone. But sometimes just hearing one another's voice can help really drop the temp. And what we use those phone calls for is either a breakdown of an email that was just sent, or we use it as a bringing the temperature down, but then we let them know we're gonna follow the call-up with an email kind of recapping what we talked about so we can get back onto the solution mode. That's the other thing with conflicts, is they need to go somewhere. They can't just live in problem mode forever. And that's what your clients want to do. Your clients are contacting you and they they want to live in problem mode. This is a problem. I don't like this. This didn't meet my expectations. What you need to be able to do as a business owner is bring that quickly into let's find a solution together mode. That's gonna be ultimately what's beneficial. That's what's gonna actually make a difference and gonna help you if you want to save face, save face, or at the very least, help you get out of the situation and be done with this client. So oftentimes, if it's a true conflict, now, like we said, oftentimes a just a quick response takes care of whatever conflict. Yeah, half the time they're having. Half the time, just you being in touch with them quickly and respectfully, and they're totally cool. They're fine. But if that doesn't solve it, what we've found works really well is to come up with a couple of solutions that we're fine with, present those through email to the client and let them choose what they would prefer. So just think about that for a second. You're in the middle of it. You're coming up with solutions that work for you. You know, maybe it's good, they're all gonna cost you a little money. You know, that's that's normal. But make them solutions that you can live with, right? And you're presenting those. That way they feel like they're in the driver's seat, or they they at least feel like they have a place at the table where you're presenting solutions. Hey, we we could either proceed this way or we could do this. Let me know what you prefer and we'll move forward accordingly. They feel really heard, really seen, really taken care of in that moment because they feel as though you're handing the keys over to them and letting them drive, letting them choose their favorite option. But remember, it started with two options that you could live with. And like Kenny said, sometimes those are going to cost you some money. That's one of the reasons why it's really important to take your margin seriously, is so that you have some extra to be able to make things right if they haven't gone totally perfectly. But that is very important as you're in this conflict, the quicker you can bring the conversation into we're solution finding. Yes. We're not just problem hunting. We're not dwelling on this thing that didn't meet the expectations. We're having an active dialogue about what we can do to make sure we meet expectations or exceed expectations. And once they've chosen one of your solutions that you've proposed, they feel not only heard, understood, and taken care of, but they feel like they're back in control. And in some senses, they kind of are, but it's also a solution that you've already recommended because it and it was your idea. So it's something that everybody can live with. It's probably a bit of a compromise on both ends, but that's totally fine. And that's how you solve a problem. That's how you get out of problem mode and into solution mode, how you manage conflict in a way that works as a business owner. Having said that, anytime Danny and I do this, and and this, like Danny said, it's not like it never happens. This is something we're we manage conflicts a lot. Sometimes I say, wow, we're really firefighters this week. Seriously. You know, it feels like there's always a fire popping up and whack-a-mole. You know, there's I don't know what it is. It kind of comes and goes in in waves where there's, you know, a handful at a time. Before you finish what you're gonna say, just remember what you're gonna say. Okay. If you can try. What I was gonna say is in our business, oftentimes the conflicts we're dealing with are timeline related, and they're not even conflicts. It's conflicts that the client is making up. Yeah. It's it's deadline that they that they're getting nervous about us hitting that we haven't even come close to missing yet. Well, that's that's wedding clients, and that's a totally different episode. That's a full that's actually probably a series. Seriously. We'll probably do a series on that. But yes, that is true. What I was gonna say is there are certain things that as we're working through things and as we're in the middle of dealing with something, and especially once that thing is put to bed, we will always evaluate and we will always have a conversation about okay, here's what happened. How do we feel that went? Do you think there was a reason why that happened as a result of something that we did? Like basically, was that our fault or not? Yeah. And it that evaluation is really important as as we deal with as we deal with conflict, certainly, but even as we experience things that work is identifying what did we do to help this? What did we do to spur this on? Is there something that we can change to prevent this or have it not go that way again? And sometimes it does require we make changes in our systems, in our processes, in our communications. And sometimes it's just a situation that we call a one in a hundred. Sometimes it's just that that one percent that slips through the cracks. There's nothing we could have done or said on the front end that would have prevented them from having oftentimes it's unrealistic expectations. Or maybe we actually did and said everything we were supposed to on the front end. And, you know, you can't control how people receive information. And for some reason it was just in one ear, out the other. And there really isn't anything you could have done to avoid it. Because that happens too. And the more people you work with, the more frequently it's going to happen. And we're in the middle of dealing with something right now, a couple of things, actually. One of which we're reworking some processes and we're reworking some language as a result of. The other thing is just we're doing the best we can to just put it behind us in whatever because people are stupid and sometimes people do dumb things, and there's nothing you can do to avoid it. All you got to do is deal with it, and it's always frustrating. But that's just what happens when you run a business. It's just the cost of doing business. So it's important to self-evaluate, but it's also important to be able to recognize that actually there's really nothing I did wrong here. So it is what it is, and I'm just gonna do my best to forget about it and move on. Yeah. Cause it's gonna happen. I mean, there are going to be times where you should change things because you did something wrong. And this client's expectations are out of whack because you didn't help them set proper ones. And then there are times where for some reason this client was expecting that we were gonna be able to become best friends and we were going to give them so much more than they purchased, and they were gonna love everything about it. And they got exactly what they purchased, and it's awesome. And we did our job, but that's not good enough for them. Yeah. This is the SparkNotes version of conflict management is it's paper trail. It's a quick response through email, which is a different language than a quick response through text, a quick response through DM, a quick response on the phone, a quick response through email with a paper trail, a quick neutral impersonal factual response through email with a paper trail. Getting into very quickly solution mode rather than continuing to live in problem mode and offering recommendations that you're good with. You're the one recommending. Plural. A couple of them, not just one. You got to give them a choice, otherwise, they don't think they had a choice. Yeah. If if if you can at all help it, even if you are pretty confident on what they're gonna choose or what would work best for them, come up with another one too, so that they can choose and then you can as best as you can bring that train back onto the tracks rather than have it, you know, fall off and somersault and turn into a fiery mess. Yeah. Train wreck. Hope that was helpful. We do want to hear from you specific conflicts. If you've ever if you're ever going through them, we want to help. We want to be as helpful as we can be in helping you identify some paths forward. That is what appointment only is all about. We want to help people build strong businesses that support the lifestyle they want to live. And you can't live a good life if you're too busy fighting fires. Absolutely. Whack a mole. No way. So send us a DM if there's a specific question you want answered, if you want us to talk about anything specific topic-wise. And don't forget to share this podcast with a friend or an enemy. Maybe the client you have conflict with. Just give them a chance. Maybe, yeah. It'd be like, hey, here's what I did. Here's here's it worked. Listen, they said people are stupid. What do you think about that? Do you agree or disagree with that? Share with a friend, rate and review, we'd appreciate it. Your appointment's over. We'll see you for the next one. And that's that. Today's appointment is over. This has been appointment only. Your time is valuable, and we're very appreciative of you spending some of it with us. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being on time. Thanks for being receptive to what we have to say. And if you have a question you'd like us to answer here on appointment only, please shoot us a DM. We would love to hear from you. We would also appreciate a five star review. We'd love if you'd follow along. Follow us here however you're hearing this, and follow us on Instagram at Appointment OnlyPod.