Oct 9, 2026 · 15 min · 8 segments
The best client relationships aren’t built through reports, deliverables, or scopes of work. They’re built by showing up. Doug and Steve Guberman talk about client kindness and what it means to…
Doug LoganHost
Steve GubermanGuest
that's a great position to be in because you build that like trust and you know, a lot of I think a lot of agencies strive to be seen as like the consigliere for their clients and be trusted upon.
And if you like forge those kinds of relationships, those are really strong relationships.
They lean on you for shit that they can't lean on a coworker for or a vendor for, you know? So I bet those are long standing relationships.
But one of the things that, yeah, has come up consistently is that idea of that role between like, right, we're an agency, but we're also...
And I hate, because a lot of shops will talk about like, we want to be a partner, not a vendor.
So it, to me, is like, how do we really kind of add that into it? I think a lot of the cases we're looking at is like...
In every case study, every client that we're working on currently and most of the clients we've had historically, we've been able to go deeper and into the weeds and into like beyond just stopping at some metric, but actually getting in and getting into the spaghetti, the mess, whatever it might be, and making sure that we're having actual business impact, not just,
signing the dotted line and saying this is, you know, we did what we said we were going to do and nothing more.
and that i mean that's a it's a risky position in a lot of ways but because it's like well that means like we get in there and find out that we we failed right like we could get deeper into it and be like we're not able to affect change do this drive revenue this way or that way for whatever reason and and we might be you know the ones that are con ourselves to the carpet if you will but i I don't think I'd have it any other way.
Like I'd rather be in that situation than in the other side of it where we're like we're hiding behind metrics and saying we're doing a great job and not really doing a great job.
Well, I think clients recognize the effort of how you're trying to show up, even if like to your point.
If we can't affect really systemic change or change in the brand or whatever the delivery is beyond the delivery, the surprise and the delight, the impact on the relationship, clients certainly understand that and recognize it, even if there's a gated feature that says it can't go beyond this department or this event or this project or whatever the thing is.
that's a great position to be in because you build that like trust and you know, a lot of I think a lot of agencies strive to be seen as like the consigliere for their clients and be trusted upon.
And if you like forge those kinds of relationships, those are really strong relationships.
They lean on you for shit that they can't lean on a coworker for or a vendor for, you know? So I bet those are long standing relationships.
But one of the things that, yeah, has come up consistently is that idea of that role between like, right, we're an agency, but we're also...
And I hate, because a lot of shops will talk about like, we want to be a partner, not a vendor.
So it, to me, is like, how do we really kind of add that into it? I think a lot of the cases we're looking at is like...
In every case study, every client that we're working on currently and most of the clients we've had historically, we've been able to go deeper and into the weeds and into like beyond just stopping at some metric, but actually getting in and getting into the spaghetti, the mess, whatever it might be, and making sure that we're having actual business impact, not just,
signing the dotted line and saying this is, you know, we did what we said we were going to do and nothing more.
and that i mean that's a it's a risky position in a lot of ways but because it's like well that means like we get in there and find out that we we failed right like we could get deeper into it and be like we're not able to affect change do this drive revenue this way or that way for whatever reason and and we might be you know the ones that are con ourselves to the carpet if you will but i I don't think I'd have it any other way.
Like I'd rather be in that situation than in the other side of it where we're like we're hiding behind metrics and saying we're doing a great job and not really doing a great job.
Well, I think clients recognize the effort of how you're trying to show up, even if like to your point.
If we can't affect really systemic change or change in the brand or whatever the delivery is beyond the delivery, the surprise and the delight, the impact on the relationship, clients certainly understand that and recognize it, even if there's a gated feature that says it can't go beyond this department or this event or this project or whatever the thing is.
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