What we can’t see
When I started my first agency, we had a client I didn’t love. He was a nice guy, and I liked his work, but I thought he was annoying and frustrating, and we ended up firing him as a client. The funny thing is, we probably shouldn’t have.
My job for this client was to take a Word Doc and photos and turn them into a MailChimp newsletter. Seems simple, but it never was. Every month was the same thing. He would send me the stuff with a tight deadline. I would put it into MailChimp within a few hours and send him a draft. Then, he would respond with the most detailed feedback I could imagine. Things like put a space here, make this image 5% larger, and there is too much space under this headline but not enough space under the next one.
I would make all the updates and send him the next draft. And, his list would come back, just slightly shorter this time. Three to five drafts in, we would finally have a final email we could ship. It was terrible; only it shouldn’t have been.
Looking back, I realize that client could see what I could not. To me, the newsletter looked fine. The images were in roughly the right spots, and the headings were, well, headings, etc. It was good enough; only it wasn’t. My client could see the errors, where I had just missed the details. I was oblivious to them, but he saw them immediately. He could see what I could not.
