Managing Difficult Clients in Business

After 19 years, they're back. Frankie Muniz, Brian Cranston, and the rest of the family reunite in Malcolm in the Middle, life's still unfair. After 10 years avoiding them, Hal and Lois demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party, pulling him straight back into their chaos. Malcolm in the Middle, Life's Still Unfair. A special four-part event. Stream now on Hulu on Disney Plus . Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to Office hours at property media.com. Again, that's officehours at property media.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. What is real? You're welcome. Okay . Question number one. Our first question comes from Jackie on Hudson on Reddit. They ask, Hi Scott, this is not a question about politics or policy or markets or stocks. It's a question about civility. Donald Trump's post after the death of Robert Mueller is so heinous and cruel. I don't know what to say to my two sons. How do we move through society today when the president's comments are just evil? His comments do matter. Thank you for all you do. Well, uh Jack Yon the Hudson word, I couldn't agree with you more. Um Robert Muller, uh captain I I'm constantly asked for roles of masculinity and And I think there are few better role models or uh people who epitomize masculinity than uh Robert Mueller. So uh captain of his lacrosse hockey and I believe baseball teams, so not only an exceptional athlete, but his his colleagues felt that he was the right one to lead those teams, uh, went to Princeton, clearly a scholar, and then enlisted in the United States. Marine Corps No bone spurs, no deferments, no draft dodging, decided to go where he was called, to serve his country, where he served honorably, was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery and a purple heart for in juries registered during the Vietnam War. Contrast that with someone who was born into wealth, dodged the draft, and then consistently is about himself, not about service , not about just doing the work, not about fidel ity. Robert Mueller , I personally as someone who has been married and divorced, quite frankly, Robert Mueller was married for sixty years. Sixty years. Imagine the kind of work and commitment and loyalty married his high school sweetheart when he was asked to engage and lead what was a very politically charged investigation, the quote unquote Russia report, just did the work, didn't make it about him. Contrast that now with many of the people young men would naturally look up to as role models , whether it's the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, or Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world. What do these people have in common? I don't know. Five marriages , twenty-two children, constantly punching down , uh mocking people, including the disabled. And this has, I think this is registers huge damage. If you're a 21-year-old male, you've essentially had your brain wired through puberty focusing on people who are more certain than competent, who pursue popularity, not principle. This has to have taken a toll on young men. So I think this is I think the damage here is just so lasting. I think we're and creating, I talk about the fact that we're evolving a new species of asocial, asexual males, I worry that we're just evolving millions of assholes who believe that masculinity correctly is a wonderful thing to be exhibited, but that masculinity is total performative bullshit and that our discourse should get increasingly coarse. So I hope and believe that a lot of people, and there's been a lot of pushback from both sides of the aisle, that say Robert Mueller I think Robert Mueller had pieces of better men in its crap than the president. So when he is buried, he will be laid to rest with full military honors, which he absolutely deserves. Captain Robert Mueller, United States Marine Corps rest in peace. Question number two also comes from Reddit. Lewis asks, Hi Scott, I'm coming up on my fifth year running a custom furniture and furniture restoration shop. My primary customers are individuals with f urniture that has sentimental value, for example, mom's desk or the jewelry box my father gave me. I started the business with the idea of serving the everyman, but I quickly realized that the price required to do the work properly isn't an everyman price. Do you have any advice for how to break the reflex of undervaluing my own work? You know the you know the answer here. Charge more. I mean you can always lower the price, but I'd have first off, I immediately go to like a YouTube video, a time lapse video where you'd say someone came in looking to recreate their mom's desk. then And it shows you over the course of a month building this thing and getting online, uh buying some keywords and boss, just double or triple your prices. And if someone says, I love it, but I can't afford it, decide to s to discount it. I don't I would imagine for something like you're doing, you're absolutely probably underpricing it. Now, at the same time, the way you know you're underpricing it is that your demand exceeds your supply. So if you're not getting a lot of business, it means you aren't underpricing it. But I think this is about that what you're doing was literally out of central casting for time-lapse videos on YouTube that are well done that will go viral and then you will get inbound off ers to refurb or recreate people's furniture, and you should charge a real price for it. And the way I would think about it is how many hours does this take, what is your time worth, and then double it because you're going to have overhead and marketing costs, or maybe even triple it. And price yourself like a true artisan. Also, pricing is a signal in that is I've found that as I have raised my prices in consulting, I actually I did get more clients. You can always lower your price, or I got higher prestige clients, because pricing is a strong signal in a artisanal business. Consulting is artisanal. I'm saying my brain is smarter than yours and it's been crafted by smart sales., if you will So I think this is a business where you want to send a pretty strong signal in terms of your pricing. So look, boss, this the answer is simple. If you're getting more business than you can handle, then raise your prices, and I would do a great deal of uh marketing and time lapse video around the process to inspire some inbounds. And don't be afraid to throw out a big number. You can always you can always uh take it down. And scarcity is the key to marketing what you're doing. I'm in the business or one of my business lines is speaking. I charge between $150 and $250,000 to speak somewhere. My prices are zero or crazy. If it's a nonprofit or someone I know I'll I won't charge anything. But if it's a corporation, I charge them a crazy amount of money. And for everyone that says no, that's marketing because they see my prices and they go, Jesus Christ . And they'll tell people that dude, that crazy professor, costs a quarter of a million dollars. By the way, I charge more for that if I have to use a passport and go to uh go abroad. Go abroad, if you will. Anyways, it sends a very strong signal. Now, granted, you can't just triple your prices and expect revenue to flow in, but you should have an assessment. You also, I hate to say this, you may want to use AI, you may want to upload everything about your business and ask it about pricing strategy and marketing strategy, but the h I find the hardest thing about business is pricing. I've always struggled with pricing around what to charge people for what service. But it does sound like innately you understand that you are underpricing your product and pricing is a signal. Anyways, not a lot of insight there, but I very much enjoyed the conversation. Thanks very much and congrats on your job and just the skill you have. I'd love to have a skill. I can't change a fucking light bulb. Seriously. I can't I can't literally can't build anything. Useless. I'd be dead a hundred years ago. Instead I'm living large. Thanks for the question. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Quince. Sometimes we buy clothes we know aren't going to last. So if you're looking to reset your wardrobe this string with clothes that actually last, look no further than Quince. This season Quince is offering 100% European linen and their super soft, moisture wicking, and anti-odor flown at activewear. Their men's linen pants and shirts are lightweight, breathable, and comfortable, essentially the perfect layer for spring. Word is our producer Claire Miller has tried Quince and she's a fan. Claire. Yeah, you know I love Quince. Um, they are the best for the summertime. Their linens are breezy, accessible price point. Um, I brought a bunch of Quince stuff to South by when we were in Austin a few weeks ago. It was a good test out for summer. So yeah, Quince keeps me comfortable every season, love their stuff. You did seem easy and breezy. Go to quince.com slash prop G for free shipping and 365-day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to q-u-in-c e.com slash prop g for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash prop g ive us Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. It's a shame when the best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong audience. Like imagine running an ad for cataract surgery on Saturday morning cartoons or running a promo for this show on a video about Roblox or something. No offense to our gen alpha listeners, but that would be a waste of anyone's ad budget. So when you want to reach the right professionals, you can use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers according to their data. That's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, senior ity, skills, company revenue, all suit and stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. That's why LinkedIn ads boast one of the highest B2B return on ad spend of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash Scott. That's LinkedIn.com slash Scott. Terms and Conditions apply. Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday Welcome back. Paul from Toronto emailed us. Hi, Scott, longtime listener here. I'm a partner at a small design firm where we've adopted a no-asshole role for clients. We've realized that the stress and friction of difficult clients far outweigh the revenue they bring in. From a scaling perspective, do you view firing bad clients as a luxury or a fundamental requirement for a young company to grow? That's to you and your team. Oh, n dude, this is easy. It's a luxury item. I mean, I'd work with fucking arsonists when I'm starting a company. I'm about to take on an advertiser that I am totally morally conflicting on because I want to grow the revenues of the company and I want to pay my people well. Yeah, great. Firing bad clients, good for you. That means you have more business and you know what to do with as a services firm, which means that you're in the top 10%. So yeah, it's great to be a purist, but you know what sucks as a purist is going fucking hungry and not being able to pay your rent. So if you're in a position that you can fire your clients, do it. I can't think of a moment where I I had some of the oh my god, when I started profit, you should have seen the Joey Bagadonuts clients I was bringing on. They weren't bad people, but I had this one guy in San Francisco, South of Market, who was selling something called the spirit flag, which was this cheap flag um that that people would buy. And he paid me, I think, $8,000 to do the marketing strategy for the fucking spirit flag. I had another guy that built just a plastic uh screen that you put in front of a fire and it made colors and you wanted advice and you paid me, I think, two thousand dollars to help him market it. Now granted, I ended up selling profit for thirty-three million dollars about I don't know, ten years eight years later. Well was it? H longow ago? Eight years later, and that by that time we'd have big clients, Wayne Sonoma and Levi's and the like. But when you're starting out, uh Christ, short of I would work with anybody that had a pulse and their check cleared. So if you're in that position , have at it. But you know, I was willing to put up with assholes. Um what's the definition of an asshole? There's a term for it. What's the synonym of asshole? Client. They're paying you. They get to be assholes. Now, if they're extraordinarily difficult and it's no longer worth the effort and it's just toxic, then fine, resign the client. But this is the mother of all good problems. But don't make the mistake of thinking that you have the luxury of building a small firm while avoiding all assholes. I love the services business, except for the clients and the employees. By the way, I've worked with assholes in my company and I've put up with them because they're talented and I need people in a small business. It's hard to recruit people. My last company had one just such a fucking enormous asshole. And we had to deal with this person because this person was that talented . Am I proud of that? Would I would I have loved to to absolutely fire this person? Yeah, but guess what? Assholes have a tendency to recognize their value and recognize why why they can be are people assholes? Because they can be. Why am I so worked up? Why am I so worked up? Anyways, it's situational. If you're blessed with more business than you need, then fine. Fire the ones that either aren't paying very well or are hard to get along with. But yeah, this is the mother of all good problems. But yeah, if it's a choice between growing the firm and being able to pay people well and having health insurance, then yeah. Uh work with assholes. There's a word for that. Work. Thanks for the question . That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours at proptymedia.com. That's office hours Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode . This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Jenner. Cammy Reek is our social producer, Brad Williams is our editor, and Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropjiPod from Propji Med ia.