Client Horror Stories

In this episode, Irina Poddubnaia, founder of TrackMage, is going to share her craziest experience in the retail industry with us. From numerous counts of deceit, misspelled brand names, and defective items, to missing orders, you’ll be shocked by her revelation.

There was a time in Irina’s life when she decided to start a new life and move to China to start her business. The experience was immensely eye-opening as she finally had the chance to travel and discover the beautiful – and not-so-beautiful side – of cultures that were way different than what she grew up with. During this big decision, Irina was faced with multiple challenges in dealing with various suppliers for her business.

One time, they decided to sell knock-offs of designer shoes and requested an order from the supplier. Lo and behold, they got the Valentinos but the name was misspelled! Pfft, no problem – it’s manageable. Irina continued to find other products to sell and had her eyes set on electric hookahs. It started perfectly as everything worked when they tested it out. Unfortunately, their new batch was extremely defective – one even blew up when a customer used it!

Irina then decided to switch to selling clothing where, upon receiving the batch from their supplier, she found out some colors were missing! Unfortunately, her business ended up not having any loyal customers because of poor service. No one wanted to trust them.

After living in China for a while, she learned that they have certain beliefs about inner circles and how when you weren’t part of it, there were just some perks you’ll never be able to receive. This meant that receiving a whopping 50% discount on their service resulted in you receiving half of your orders defective and useless.

If you’re eager to learn more about Chinese culture, you better tune in!

⁠Morgan Friedman

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In this episode, Sherrilynne Starkie, Social Media Expert and Host of the 50 Women Over 50 podcast, is going to tell us a horror story no business owner would ever like to go through. It’s an experience like no other, which involves talks about money, paperwork, and legalities.

Sherrilynne has been in marketing and communications approaching 30 years of experience, and during this time, she established her own public relations agency at the dead center of the Irish Sea.

She got a call from a tech guy looking to launch his own business. This figure had been introduced to Sherrilynne by a long-term and loyal client, and he was looking to launch a new telecommunications service. Sherrilynne was intrigued and took on the challenge, working with the new client on a monthly retainer for around 5–6 months.

At first, things were going great. Sherrilynne was crushing it, and the client seemed to be thrilled with her work. But then, disaster struck. The old client who had referred Sherrilynne to the new client reached out, wondering if they had been paid since they hadn't been receiving payment for their own services. She decided to give her client the benefit of the doubt, but alarm bells were going off in her head and instinct pushed her to do some more digging.

Sherrilynne soon found out that the new client had been consistently late with payments, always with some excuse or another. Eventually, the client stopped taking her calls and responding to her altogether. What a nightmare! But this didn’t faze Sherrilynne.

She decided to take matters into her own hands and took the new client to court, hoping to get the payment she was owed. However, it seems like it was never meant to be. The client filed for bankruptcy, and Sherrilynne was left with nothing to show for all her hard work and trouble in court. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but she knew that she had given it her all.

The story doesn’t end there though. Listen to the full episode to know all the important details!

Morgan Friedman⁠

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In this episode, Kelsey Knutson, business coach, and podcast coach shared a tea-worthy story about her experience and survival of a “bridezilla.” While even talking about the experience grew a pit in her stomach, it helped her become the successful entrepreneur she is today. But we’ll get to that in a bit!

Let us rewind to when Kelsey had just started her hair & makeup artist business and was working on building connections to expand her clientele. A friend of a friend referred her to a certain client who was about to get married, and Kelsey was set to prepare the bride’s bridal hair as well as her bridesmaids’.

On the day of the wedding, everyone was hungover and late, and Kelsey had eleven looks to do – that’s 45 minutes each! Fast forward, she’d already started working on the bride’s look and was proud of herself for achieving the exact look they’d practiced during their trial run. She was just about to take a photo when the bride looked in the mirror and said, “I f*ing hate it”. 

Imagine Kelsey’s surprise! She then asked the bride to figure out what kind of look she wanted and worked on the rest of the bridesmaids’ hair. The bride eventually decided she would prefer a messier look. Like the superstar that she is, she was able to fix the look and somehow got everyone done in time. At this point, Kelsey had already started feeling defeated but overheard the bride talking to her grandma and cursing her on the phone.

This is when Kelsey realizes that there’s probably something wrong with the bride. Red flags had started popping up left and right but she continued to pull through. But you know what the worst part is? Despite her best efforts, Kelsey ended up not getting paid for her services.

As the episode ends, Kelsey shares the importance of asking questions before committing to something, taking time to assess what you could do differently in certain situations, and establishing proper communication.

This episode is an eye-opener to businessmen and entrepreneurs, but you’ll need to listen to the whole episode to understand more!

⁠Morgan Friedman⁠

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In this episode, our guest, Anika Jackson, shares a story of when she worked with a client who had a million projects plus a nonprofit which was bankrolled and produced by her husband. Although that’s a good thing, there are plenty of red flags that came with it and Anika had first-hand experience with this situation.

To start, each project had its own logo, website, and brand identity. The client hired multiple experts in different fields and with different scopes of work, including Anika, who was assigned as her PR manager. Whenever they would go to meetings, the client and her husband would be there, which causes confusion surrounding who is the actual boss.

Then, the client wanted to hire people as her employees but under Anika’s company. Anika didn't know them, didn’t vet them, and didn’t want to hire full-time, but it happened. As days went by, things started getting weird, a lot of missed meetings, and all of a sudden, the contract just stopped without notice.

Anika found out that she was ghosted, and the client made a bunch of reasons like she wanted to stop doing services, she wasn’t happy with Anika’s team, and she didn’t feel like she was getting enough of Anika’s time.

But there was spicy “tea” that Anika discovered. Let’s just say it had to do with a risque virtual affair with somebody who was not her client’s husband.

Learn more about the “tea” and more professional lessons in this episode!

Morgan Friedman

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In this episode, Robert Persichitte, a Financial Planner of Delagify Financial, shares a relatable adulting story of a client who absolutely hated his job and just wanted to get out of it.

This client was a pretty high-level attorney, a pretty high earner, and a very high-stress job. He wanted to retire as soon as possible. So Robert followed his usual process with the client and tried to put everything in the context of goals.

But this is where the problem came in with this client. The client gave him an estimate of about $6,000 a month in lifestyle expenses which is considered as having fun money, paying for things like groceries, and going out.

However, something common amongst high-earning clients is that they're unaware of the numbers they're actually spending. Robert then came to an actual estimate of the client's household spending, which totaled $10,000 a month. The catch is that his client was not the one in the household spending that money. He only spent about $2,000 a month, and the other $8,000 came from his wife.

At this point, Robert knew that his client's goal of early retirement wasn't possible. Robert formed a great strategy to resolve this issue, focusing on purposeful communication and subtle approaches to client management. 

Watch the full episode to learn how he did it!

Morgan Friedman

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In this episode, Mark Herschberg, a Chief Technology Officer and author shares his story when he was working under “Evil Corp” (a code name for the company).

At that time, he was assigned to a company division that was working on creating a new type of video service/ video marketplace platform where viewers could watch content from movie studios and tv stations under controlled access. With this wonderful idea in mind, Evil Corp put out a press release stating their release date.

The catch is that Evil Corp wasn't very good at doing projects like this, so they decided to get a vendor to do it for them. But there’s more…The funny thing is the vendor wasn’t optimized for this project, and they wanted to bring in 2 more vendors that had the technology that Evil Corp needed.

By the time Mark was brought into the company, the project was launched. Instead of being a convenient video platform, everything was done manually by phone and email. Plus, there was a game of broken telephone going on between the 3 vendors and the internal team of the company.

As Mark said, everything was on fire, and he was there to put out the fires. By the end of the episode, Mark and Morgan talked about the essence of management, communication, and problem-solving, which could be helpful to you as well! 

Morgan Friedman

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In this episode, Matthew Davis of Davis Business Law, reveals how his law firm decided to not do family law anymore because of this client-horror story.

It all started when a client came to his law firm where his ex-wife hated his guts, and she had a very good reason to because he got another woman pregnant. Still, he thought that his ex-wife was interfering with his relationship with the kids, which she legitimately was, but he wanted to be the victim in the whole ordeal.

The client kept coming to Matt, asking him to help him with his case, and Matt tried to explain to him what would happen in court and what the judge would possibly come up with in his case. Matt started to feel sorry for him, and he was pretty persistent, so Matt decided to help him.

The time came when they took the case to court, the judge was losing his temper with Matt’s client, and Matt ended up being the bad guy instead. At the end of the episode, Matt shared some interesting concepts about the drama triangle game, the grudge match, and some ways to incorporate psychology to prevent troublesome issues.

Morgan Friedman

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In this episode, Jeremy Streten, a Lawyer and Business Coaching Support, shared a story of when a client from a construction company approached to get approval to build a 30-story high-rise building in Australia.

His client was thinking of selling the property and packaging it all up to a developer for building the high-rise. However, his business partner, an architect, was caught up in the thought that he was going to earn a lot from this and actually develop and build the property himself. A third investor, who had invested 10%, was supportive of selling the property to a reliable developer.

So, two of them were on the same page while the other one was thinking of something grand. The catch is that these three guys didn’t communicate their end goal for this. They just assumed that each of them knew what they would do. Worst of all, this misunderstanding ended up in court.

As the episode ends, Jeremy shared valuable thoughts that are not only helpful in the legal profession but to other businesses as well. He also pointed out the little things we often overlook are essential in big decisions.

Morgan Friedman

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This was when she was just newly working for a brand, selling luxury watches for men. Divya Patel, a PPC Specialist, was handling the PPC service of the brand.

At that time, they were going to launch a YouTube campaign and she offered to create the ad assets for them since she’s been with the brand from the start. She was there to help the clients with the brand message, tone of voice, and everything about branding.

The client declined her offer and told her that they will sort the video out themselves so that they could focus on the campaign. Still, Divya and her team briefed the client on how the video should turn out. Divya and the team expected the video to be showcasing the watch that they’ll be launching.

One day, as Divya walked into the office that day, her manager was upset and the team was circled around a computer. Turns out, the client posted the video on YouTube without telling the team.

To their dismay, the video was the complete opposite of what they expected and what was discussed in the briefing. Instead of men wearing and showcasing the watch, women in lingerie were there and the video didn’t focus on the watch, which was their product.

That’s not all. Divya Googled her client and she saw her client's name plastered on UK’s biggest tabloid negatively, something about how the video was degrading to women.

Divya and the team were utterly disappointed and upset. They felt that all the work they’ve been putting into the brand was just thrown out the window. When Divya and the team approached their clients about it, they were really happy about it because they thought it was good publicity and a nice way to put their name out there.

Thankfully, Divya and the team were able to get through this issue. Watch the episode to learn more about how they resolved the problem and the steps they took moving forward.

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In this episode, Tom Schwab of Interview Valet shares how trust and communication flow in the same river towards success. His story pointed out how important it is to educate clients, provide a timeline and establish clear solutions in risk analysis when working with clients.

The story happened when Tom, a podcast marketing specialist, worked with a client with zero knowledge of how podcasts work. At first, the onboarding was great, the podcast recording was super smooth and it was a really abundant podcast session.

Five days later, he received a nasty and angry email from the client, all about how upset she was for not getting results in those five days. She also mentioned that she was with a radio show and had 4 million listens, which were not actually 4 million listens as she thought.

She started to complain and demanded to have her money back. Tom didn’t want to ruin their reputation so he asked her to wait 10 days after the podcast to see the results.

By the end of the episode, Morgan and Tom shared interesting conclusions about the hierarchy of communication and how it helped Tom to deal with the client. Watch the episode to learn more!

Morgan Friedman

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