You Shouldn't Have A Favorite Kid, But...
Hey parents of multiple kids, dogs, cats… even though we know we’re not SUPPOSED to have a favorite, we do.
It’s OK to admit it, no one is watching you read, or sees you nodding your head in agreement. Except me, you may want to block your webcam. JK 🤣!
Just as we’re not supposed to have a favorite kid, I guess we’re not supposed to have a favorite client, but I do.
Several years ago, Robert and I met at Brendon Burchard’s Influencer Summit. We hit it off right away, and that night I joined him and his then-fiance, Erika, for dinner. We had a great meal and an even better conversation.
Shortly after the conference, Robert became a client. I began consulting and coaching him in his businesses. A few months deep into the relationship, we began the task of rebranding his Daiquiri Express shops in Texas and relaunching the brand as Daiquiri Fusion.
Just like you and I, Robert’s businesses have their own unique challenges, customers, and needs. We started working through many of the exercises we do as business owners, including identifying their ideal customers, retraining customer-facing employees, and overhauling a dark and dingy chain of drink shops. We dealt with everything from toxic employees, to lack of leadership, to running operations with no SOPs. There was a lot of heavy lifting. Don’t get me started on the drive-thru windows… employees made a mess of the place.
Here we are at the start of the new year, and not only has Daiquiri Fusion emerged as a great brand, but both my relationship and the friendship I’ve built with this client over the years are tremendous. Like the business, it too has evolved.
Today, he’s co-branding his signature Daiquiri Fusion brand with a brand that has emerged over the years we’ve been working together — Boozy Beans. The storefronts look incredible and they are destinations, not eyesores. The website is alive with the brand and feels like an online daiquiri, if you could drink a website.
I’ve cooked dinner with them in their beautiful kitchen, have spent hours having great conversations over drinks out back, I was invited to their wedding, I know their family, their stories.
The more you get to know your clients and their business, the more of a vested interest you have in their success.
You see, to me — business isn’t purely transactional — it’s relational. Business is personal, it’s one-to-one. For as long as I could remember, I’ve always considered business P2P, not B2B. At the end of the day, business is person to person, not business to business.
