The Ego-Driven Mistake Most Service Providers Make

In this episode, Sebastian and Nathan discuss the ego-driven mistake that most service providers make. They emphasise the importance of putting clients above oneself and maintaining an orientation towards the client. They highlight the dangers of pride and self-orientation, such as neglecting client needs, losing trust, and ultimately losing clients. On the other hand, they explain that by putting clients first, demonstrating a passion for their business, and going the extra mile, service providers can build trust, admiration, and long-term client relationships.

Takeaways

• Put your clients above yourself and maintain an orientation towards the client.
• Neglecting client needs and focusing on self-orientation can lead to losing trust and clients.
• Demonstrate passion for your client's business and go the extra mile to build trust and admiration.
• Stay updated on your client's goals and evolve with their changing needs.
• Avoid dismissing tasks or requests that may seem beneath you, as they contribute to overall service quality.
• Maintaining a humble attitude and suppressing ego is crucial for continual service improvement.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
11:53 The Ego-Driven Journey of Success
25:10 Implications of Failing to Put Clients Above Yourself
29:30 Takeaways and Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:01

Welcome back to the Blues Brothers podcast, the show in which we share the challenges, insights and triumphs that come in taking 7th in... Welcome back to the Blues Brother podcast, the show in which we share the challenges, insights and triumphs that come with taking seven -figure brands to eight-figures and beyond and building the remarkable teams behind them. In this episode, I'm joined by Nathan Perdreau. How are you doing? Very well, how are you? Very good, living the dream. Today, we'd like to speak to the ego-driven mistake that most service providers make. And so for operators, the intention is to enable you to assess whether your team consists of people who are going to help you move towards your goals or people who will eventually put you off track. And for those who serve operators, we intend on helping you avoid this mistake entirely. Now, to start with, we help e -commerce businesses produce better financial outcomes. That's what we do, primarily through performance marketing, growth marketing, but then also through the closer or facilitating the closer alignment between the three core functions of an e -commerce business being marketing, finance, and operations. So a very instrumental role in a company's success. To do so, We hire very smart and capable individuals. We train and develop those individuals exhaustively and perpetually, and we hold each other accountable to excellence. The thing is, is that when you reach a certain level of competence, a type of flywheel begins to activate. And through that, you start delivering wins at a much faster rate. And so in our context, it is... a faster realization of growth or efficiency targets on behalf of our clients. It's being able to diagnose and resolve account issues within minutes when it previously took hours of work. It could be having brands reach out to us and specifically request that one individual because of their reputation within the company. Or it could be even helping more and more. small families, moms and dads actually quit their full -time job because over the past two years you've helped that business grow profitably to a point where they can go all in which is brilliant right. The danger comes, however, is when your pride begins to run away from you and you don't hold yourself in check or you don't have other people holding you in check. And we've observed that numerous times over the past few years. What we tend to see, or what we have seen on occasion, is that this prideful individual... their orientation begins to shift away from the client and onto the self. what that might look like. They will take greater risks to flex their prowess to flex their technical abilities at the potential detriment of the client. They may fail to keep abreast of how the client's North Star changes and evolves over time because they're too focused on the work that they are doing and starts to become detached from the outcome of the client. And perhaps they'll even turn their nose up when the client starts to ask them to do some extra work or some work that is deemed beneath them because of their level of competence. Why that happens is very natural. When you're a high performer, when you're a smart individual and you are technically brilliant and you are able to deliver great work. You derive immense satisfaction for the work itself because it's a reflection or a manifestation of your abilities as a professional. You've stacked up your skills, you've got a lot of experience and you are now able to deliver excellent work. And so you want to be recognized for that work. You are also more likely to, I guess, fear the feeling of inferiority if someone, if a client puts into question those abilities or your competence, even indirectly. may also be a fear of feeling inferior or gravitating away from feeling inferior when it comes to getting a request from a client, some admin task or some additional report or reaching out to a support, a tech support, which isn't within your usual scope of work or your scope of responsibilities on behalf of the client. You may feel that's below you. And so again, you might be offended to be even asked to do that sort of work. The thing is, is that that's a problem because we are service providers. What I think people forget to realize or otherwise simply forget at some point in their career as they continue to ascend, as they continue to become a better professional, a more competent professional. And this is from Patrick Lanzione, he's getting naked, is that service shares the same root as servant and even subservience. What that means is as a service provider, you must put your clients above you as you were in their service, not the other way around. I'm just waiting, so put a timestamp for when you have to click this out. I'm just, you need to be, I'm just gonna go through it. It's gonna end up being a 10 minute waterlog, unless you like just jump in quickly with a common request. Well, no. All right, so acting in their service, what does that actually look like? How does it look in practice? Well, I mentioned Northstar. You really do need to have an intimate understanding of your client's Northstar. And it's not necessarily what matters, what they've expressed to you at a surface level. For example, it's not a certain, or it may not be a certain ROAS target within an ad account. For us, it's the North Star around what's the financial outcome that they're looking to achieve through bringing us on board as a service provider. Or it is the expectation that they have of us through our analysis and our reporting. the expectation that they receive certain information, certain quality information that enables better decision making at a business level, not just focused on what are the implications at, sorry, an ad account level. When you start to work with a client for a long time and there's a certain level of trust and you start growing as a professional or as a competent individual and that orientation shifts away from the client onto the self, it's often the case that you will lose touch of what matters most to your clients. And perhaps you... knew what happened or so you knew what mattered most to the client to begin with at the start of the partnership. But then through I suppose complacency and a lack of orientation around the client, you failed to keep, you failed to proactively seek how that North Star evolves over time. So month on month, quarter to quarter, year to year. So that is one example of how putting your clients above you looks in practice. It is maintaining an intimate understanding of what matters to them, what their North Star is, and keeping abreast of how that evolves over time. Another example is maintaining genuine passion for the business that you're serving and really honoring the client. and the clients work and their place within the market or the industry that they're operating in. If you fail to demonstrate passion and truly believe that you're making an impact that's worth or making a worthy impact on that business because it is helping them better serve their customers or their community. you no longer are putting the client above you and your clients will sense that. They will notice that you are becoming careless to their outcomes. You are becoming lazy or you're just not. Demonstrating passion and they're gonna sense that because they are on a mission. They are as the operators of the business. They believe that they are doing a or making a worthy contribution to again their customers or their community and They will want to have people on their team who are aligned with Those contributions that are aligned with their mission and what they're looking to achieve and how they're looking to achieve those goals And so the second demonstration of how that looks in practice is maintaining a genuine passion for the business itself and not just simply for the work that you're doing siloed out within the overall business. And then the final one that I want to speak to is being okay with doing the dirty work. So I briefly alluded to a couple of times there, but if a client makes a request of you and it's a request to do a task that you deem now beneath you, your ego is getting in the way of serving your client. putting it into practice, you need to be able, you need to be okay with putting your ego aside and shouldering a task that is possibly below your pay grade because you are acting in service of the client. And if at that time that is what they need from you as a partner or a true player on their team, then as a great service provider, that is what you need to be doing. agree more. I think I might hop in here before the second half of this, which is, I have a question and then I have a few things to say on what you've said so far. Ego's relationship with service quality is essentially the point that's been made here and what we're trying to lay out. I think one of the reasons why we've been able to scale so quickly with absolutely zero experience in the agency world with me and said never having worked at an agency previously is because of our ability to detach ego from the service delivery. And I think it's a podcast itself where we can break down how we scale so quickly in three years with zero prior experience. But that would definitely be one of them. And. there's this entrepreneurial journey, which directly cross translates to really anyone. I don't think this is restricted to the entrepreneur or the business owner. I think this applies to anyone in any role in any facet of their life, which is that as you start to see success in a specific domain, it will always lead to an ego being built because you start to become very confident in your ability to execute within that domain. The issue is that as you start to develop an ego, that's what leads to your downfall. almost all of the qualities and traits that come with a large ego will generally lead to poorer decision making and you'll just collapse back down. And so everyone is they're trying to raise up, whether it's through owning a business, whether it's through a career, whatever, whatever domain it might be, they start to generate this ego, which is a counteracting force, which is going to start to hold them back. And so everyone's going through this challenge and this journey of trying to suppress an ego so that they can continue to take steps up the ladder. And I think that's one of the things that holds a lot of agencies back a lot of service providers. And you start to see this eventuate in very specific circumstances with clients, where a client might make a very valid point, or what seems to be a valid point from their perspective about your service delivery. And then because of your ego, in the situation, you reject it, you lose the client, you don't have a learning experience, and then the service doesn't continue to improve. And this literally happens on a day to day basis if you have enough clients, if you have a big enough client base, right. And it becomes harder and harder and harder to accept feedback, as you start to build more and more credentials in your back pocket. Like at this stage, I've worked on over 250 ecom brands. It's very easy for me to sit here and say, I've seen over 250 ecom brands. That's not right. This is what you should do. Or this is how we've seen success for clients. But continuing to get feedback from the other end and suppressing ego is one of the biggest drivers of continual service improvement and essentially being able to maintain higher retention as well. And then on that, the other thing that I want to quickly mention, and this is another like entrepreneurial business owner quote that Elon Musk said, but I think it's still directly cross translates to anyone in any stage of their career in any role, which is The business, everyone thinks that the business owner is the one doing all the fun work, but they just get left left with all the scraps at the end of the day. And it's it is true. It's like all the stuff that there's not enough of that work for an actual dedicated role. It just gets thrown over to the business owner or the CEO or whoever has to deal with it. And that happens at all stages in every single business. And so if a client is asking for a a little admin task or something like that, you might very much say, go, this isn't in my role. This isn't what I should be doing. I shouldn't be checking a campaign or whatever it might be within the context of your specific circumstance. But the reality of it is that it's those fine little things. That's actually what makes up the entire service quality and is what leads to you having an excellent service across the board. With that being said, clients start to ask, okay, can you do this? Can you do that? The immediate question here is how do you stop scope creep, which is where let's say that we do Facebook and Google ads, and then they say, Hey, can you have a look at our SEO? And then we have a look and then they're like, well, can you do a couple of things that you suggested? And then we're like, ah, okay, we want to maintain this high service delivery. Nathan and Seb said on this podcast that all the little admin things you should do them because it makes us look good. And then suddenly you're actually. their entire marketing manager across the board and you're doing all these different things for them. Because if you give someone an inch, they'll take a mile. So how do you maintain a high delivery, higher level of service delivery? How do you know when it's an admin task that you should do without leading into a situation where you start to have scope great. Yeah, really good question. Before I answer it, I'll just go back to sort of reaffirm what you said before. Maybe just provide a caveat when it comes to ego. So you're absolutely right that with greater credibility and greater expertise in a certain domain, you build ego. I also don't want people to necessarily think that ego is bad in itself. I mean, I'm grateful for my ego. I'm grateful for your ego because we believe that confidence comes through competence. And so we want our people, we want ourselves to be competent individuals and confident as a result. I think the issue possibly. the breakdown occurs again when it comes to the orientation piece. If you may know the trusted advisor equation and it is on the numerator, it is credibility, reliability and intimacy and on the denominator that is divided by self-orientation. And so as long as you're... reliability or your client's ability to rely on you and your clients belief in your credibility born through competence continues to increase whilst maintaining an orientation towards the client, then that's okay. But as the numerator expands and then the denominator, it gets shrunk, so you focus more on the self. Oh, sorry, as self -orientation expands, then trust breaks down. And that's where the problem arises. When it comes to scope group, I think context really matters here. And so being able to, I guess, evaluate what is the client asking for. and does it matter with a capital M to the client? I'm not saying you need to be getting all that requests and putting in a bucket of, I should do this and then I can dismiss everything else. It's just mostly how are you going to treat each task as a priority? Let's say to use your example, we're running Facebook ads, we're running Google ads, and then they're asking us to take a look into their SEO. Well, if they're just curious for us to take a look into their SEO, we'll then ask the question of, okay, are we capable? Does our capability support an evaluation on their SEO, on their organic growth strategy? If the answer is yes, then possibly we can take a look or get the right individual on the team to take a look and just say, yep, we can take a look over the next two weeks, over the next four night or over the next month and just set a longer time horizon for performing a bit of a assessment on their SEO. If we don't, the answer is no, we don't actually have any sort of domain expertise in SEO. We can't make any sort of useful, meaningful assessment of their strategy. Then I would ask myself, okay, well, who do I know? Who can I reach out to who will have domain expertise to provide a meaningful assessment? And if I do have that person, then I can just tell the client very candidly. SEO is not our strength. It is not our zone of genius. Though I do have a couple of people who I can connect you with. to perform an analysis and I'm sure that they'd be able to do so at a high level, just if you are curious about it. And then you make that connection. But even going that extra mile of actually thinking through, can we do a meaningful assessment? Do I know anyone who can, if the answer is no, and then making that connection is serving your client. And it is a form of scope creep because you don't necessarily need to be doing that, but it is acting in your client's service. If decline is not acting out of curiosity, but they are acting out of, I guess, some sort of derivative of pain, if we have noticed that their SEO performances or their organic performances significantly declined over the trailing 12 months or over the last 90 days, and decline has no formal support on SEO. then I would ramp up that priority to seek support on behalf of my client. Again, not necessarily take away from the time that I'm spending within the ad accounts on paid media performance, but either reach out to certain SEO specialists in the industry, connect those with the client and provide context on their behalf or... if I need some support because I don't have the time to do so, lean on a teammate or lean on a manager and be like, Hey, my client has expressed some issues with regard to their SEO performance. I have no idea how to approach that, that problem or how to provide an evaluation and seek support. Can you, can you do this on my behalf? And a great manager will. and only act in the service of the client, but also act in the service of the individual, of that teammate. And then they will likely go out and find some credible SEO partners to connect with the client. So when it comes to scope group, I think there's a difference between onboarding work that you're not qualified to do, and then... going the actual extra mile to contribute in some even small way, which demonstrates to your client that you are listening to their pains or their frustrations or they catering to their curiosity and doing a bit of extra work. And I think during times of pain for that client, if they are, if that is having a material impact on their business in a negative way, then I believe. that you should allow for scope creep and go the extra mile. Any further questions about Drops? Scope correct? No, I think you've answered it well. Okay. I guess to move towards the implications of failing to put yourself below your clients, failing to put your clients above you. And I'll start with a quote from this writer, John Ruskin, if I'm saying that right, which is, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. What I've observed is that if you are self-oriented and fail to understand what matters most to your clients and how this evolves over time, if you don't demonstrate a genuine interest in your client's business and the work you're delivering for them, if you turn your nose up at client requests because you believe you're too good or overly qualified for them, number one, your clients will... express frustrations as they no longer feel heard by you. As a result, they will become distant. They will start to neglect your reports because they aren't deemed useful anymore. They're not allowing for better decision making. They're not connected to the North Star outcome or the financial outcome that you're looking to deliver or contribute towards. They sense that you're not willing to go the extra mile on their behalf. They sense that you're not actually interested in their mission, that you're not bought into what they're actually doing. Trust will erode and eventually your clients will leave you. But if you do put your clients above you, if you do have an orientation and maintain that orientation towards the client, if you study your clients and ask the right questions, thoughtful questions to make sure you know what really matters most, what matters with a capital M to them and how that evolves over time. If you're willing to shoulder a few additional responsibilities, particularly during times of pain. If you demonstrate a passion for their business and how your work is connected to that impact that they're driving, your clients will trust you and they will trust you a whole lot more than they would otherwise do if you put yourself above them. They will respect you. They will admire you. They will recognize your contributions. even though that might seem counterintuitive. And ultimately you will have a client for life. What's going on? Are we done or? How do we wrap this up nicely? I don't know, but this is becoming an annoying edit for me. Do you want to just cut it there? Maybe just go like a recap. take away yet. Can you not pause recordings? Should we just cut it there? No, let's wrap it up properly. Yeah. So for operators who are listening, take note of your team's attitude and any firms that you're working with, their attitude. assess what they're orienting themselves around. Take a look at their reporting and see if you can see the connection between their reports and your desired outcomes. Ask themselves what your goals are, what the business goals are, and then how are they contributing to those goals to see how connected they feel to them and how intimately they understand them. Ask them questions of what do you like most about what we do here? What do you like about the customers we serve or the products that we manufacture and that we offer? And then for those who serve operators, ask yourself or assess your orientation. Ask yourself, do you know what your clients' Null Stars are? Or do you just feel or sense? as though you know them because you knew them six months ago, 12 months ago, or two years ago, are you staying up to date? Are you genuinely passionate about the business that you're serving? Do you see a connection between the work that you're delivering and the outcomes that the business is looking to realize? And do you see yourself or do you find yourself turning your nose down and dismissing work that you deem below you or are you willing and proactive in going the extra mile on behalf of your clients because you genuinely in your bones believe that you are serving them. Any final words from you?