Do I Have To Let A Client Be Wrong?
By: Jason Genet
Tags: Startup, Dropshipping, Entrepreneur, Agency, Opportunity

As an agency owner we face many different issues while working with many different Executives. About two years ago we decided to let a few clients go. One was a pretty good friend and a pretty big part of our revenue. He was adamant that I needed to let him be wrong. Let his team make mistakes. It really made no sense to me. I felt like we were hired to help you avoid mistakes, navigate through the mistakes that happen and being up to date of the changes in my field and theirs. So instead of just taking a contract renewal we decided it was time to part ways.

Do not get me wrong, I am not a perfectionist. I am not even close to perfect. But I do take my clients issues and make them mine. I treat their company like it was mine. This was not the first time that we had butted heads with the people that hired us to get them results. Sometimes the path to results is not the change they are comfortable with. I would often call it Founderitis. They knew they needed help, they were willing to pay for it but getting them to accept it was never easy. Our Advisors told us that we should take the money and the client that pays and does not want help is the most profitable client. We want, we strive to be valuable. We take the approach of what would we do if we were running the company, what would we want from the investment into our Agency?

So one day I asked my partner some questions that would alter our path and not be without risk. Were we really right? Are we as capable as we tend to tell people we are. Did we benefit from the client's inability to hear our vision? Would we be our own worst client if we formed a company? I mean what can go wrong?

So November 2017 we decided that we would enter a crowded space that we had been researching for a client. Saturated would be an understatement. Many home based creators and large industrial scale manufacturers. We decide lets focus on popular search term and see what we could do with it. Since we were down a few clients funds were limited and we decided that we would attempt to make this work with a dropship set up. That too being a saturated market. Credit Card Processing was going to be higher than typical, the ability to advertise was taken away from us before we started. So we had to do this organically with a saturated concept and product. It was going to get worse before it got better. We also could not use Amazon, PayPal, or platforms like Shopify.

November 2017 we made our first sale. Was it a fluke? No they kept coming. Then in June of 2018 I had an MRI for an old injury from when I was in the Army. The Dr. called and that is never a good thing with the VA. She said I needed to get to the clinic and see my primary care Physician, she told me I had a large mass on my Thyroid. After a series of appointments and test it came back as 70% cancer, but it was the good kind. Who knew there was a good kind? So on top of business life changes. We had been going like gangbusters since we launched in November. Vendors were happy, customers were happy, the email list was growing, the sales were growing, and our traditional customers were happy as well. Since we picked a saturated space we had a less than ideal URL but still we were making it happen. After thousands of transactions and climbing the SEO ranks we started getting a lot of interesting data.

The data we put into a new business and launched our own product line in this space. Yes it is saturated but we felt that we could / can out market the majority of the industry. Also having our own brand will hedge losing of any of the Brands that we were drop shipping for. We decided to launch another brand at the same time. Diversity in the space seemed to make a lot of sense to us. If ne fails you have the other and the work is the same for each with minor tweaks. The cancer is now gone and our first brand launched this past week. I thought that I would bring you along in this journey with me. We already have sales. We already have wholesale customers. We are launching a big campaign in the next coming days. We are hiring and the second brand will be launching in the next few weeks. I expect to fail, I expect to have issues, and I am now certain that I know it is not okay to let your client be wrong.

The point of the writing (sorry for the wall of text) is to show you that you can do the things you strive to do, chase the dreams you have without the brandname education, a lot of money, or a new idea. As I mentioned and we will discuss along the way, life has a lot of ups and downs as does business. You will always have an excuse or a reason not to do something. Sometimes the hesitation can cost you the opportunity of a lifetime. I know nothing is permanent in life or business. There is no course to buy all you have to do is try.