A Client Horror Story
That time when you lost half a million dollars despite a 10-year fight…
Watch the full episode →Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. I’m excited to have with me today, Matt Stafford. How are you doing on this bright and early morning, Matt?
I’m doing good. I’m actually in Florida, so uh, by tonight we should be getting the hurricane, so we’re kind of hunkered down, um, at home, making sure that, uh, you know, we’re prepared.
In that case, I am happy that we scheduled this recording for early this morning. Not a late night recording. Yeah, same. Speaking of horrors, there are weather horrors that damage you, but they’re also client horrors. Yes. Um, let, let’s jump into, uh, your story of my coffee in hand. What happened to you, Matt?
Well, um, I have more than one, so I’ll start, uh, I’ll start Back when I was in the brick and mortar businesses, I had a commercial concrete business for about 23 years. I started it right out of high school and, uh, built it up to the point where we were traveling around the country about 200 days a year and building Walmarts, Home Depot,s and Lowe’s, uh, the big box stores, and, it was going really well until 2009, which is when the housing bus kind of happened, 2008 and some of the larger general contractors, that were in like big development. You know, putting in big housing tracks, we’d also do the box stores. And we had a company that we had worked for about four years doing the Walmarts. And, when the housing bubble happened, it hit them hard, and they ended up defaulting on a couple of the jobs that they had and one with a Walmart with us. And, they ended up, it was about 256,000 is what they owed to us. And, uh, didn’t pay. And so then we had a curbing subcontractor that did the curb work and, it was about 80 grand worth of work, but they sued us to get the money even though we hadn’t been paid. And so then that kind of just started stacking things on. And, I wanna say we finally settled. That after hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and just a whole bunch of other stuff, almost 2020, 2019, 2020. So it took almost 10 years. 10 years, yeah. And, and two, 300,000 trying to get the money that we never ended up getting. So, over, over the period of 10 years and all the legal battles is over half a million dollars. So that was, um, for sure that was the worst.
So let, let, let’s dive into a little bit about that. Dude, losing a half million dollars, my heart flutters by just hearing about it. And if I were in your shoes, I think I would have no hair left. Yeah.
Yeah, it’s starting to fall out in the front. That’s probably why it started. Then you can see them for hair loss.
Yeah. Stress induced hair loss.
I think really, man. The amount of wisdom and life experience that came with it. I, I will say, of course, when you’re in the middle of something or you’re in the middle of these horror stories, it feels like the end of the world. Like, yes, there’s no way you’re gonna come out of it. It’s just bad, and your brain takes off with all these stories. The good thing about it is eventually over time, if you take the time to do the work around it, there is a lot of lessons and probably multiple things that I could have done differently, had I ever even experienced a smaller setback. But, I was very fortunate for years and years and years to not have anybody not pay me. And so, I was very novice at having the lawsuit and because I had done business with them for three or four years, and they had always been great at paying and always took care of us. We had done favors for them for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they paid us. I just kept thinking that it was gonna be okay, and so I didn’t do the proper things to secure what’s right and take care of the business properly.
I want to dive into some of those so we can extract some specific lessons from this powerful story. First I wanna mention, it’s an interesting point that actually don’t think has come up in a previous episode. And I always try to make sure there’s at least one new point in every episode, which is your point about. The downside of being too lucky, you would think, oh no, I’ve never had any problems. Like, like, you’re so lucky and you’re so happy. But actually, if you’ve never had any problems of a particular sort, then you’re just unprepared for when the big one happens. And it reminds me of something that like so many European friends of mine have said, it’s like a European trope. Europeans always say, here in Europe, we kids start drinking just a little bit of alcohol when they’re like 12, 13. So when they’re 18, they can like moderate themselves as opposed to the US where it’s like nothing, and suddenly you turn 18 and you go to college and you get completely drunk. So you were, you were a bit like the naive American kid that got 100%.
Yeah and I was prepared like nine or 20-year-old turning 21 and being not allowed to go out for his first time. And I just was naive.
Yeah. So, this is an important lesson to keep in mind. If you’re too lucky, that means you might be unprepared for the big one happens. In other words, you need lots of little stressors. Okay, we’ve got one good lesson. Now let’s try to go for a few more. Yeah before I start questioning, you said that you learned a few big life lessons. Do you wanna share some?
Yeah, one probably the value of having good quality mentors and interesting, not cheerleaders, but people who have been where you’re at or at a higher level that you can get advice from because for sure, I’m positive. Um, if I would’ve had some advice or if I would’ve had people in place, it would’ve saved, it would’ve saved a lot of heartache because you know, I talk about it now, like it wasn’t that big of a deal but I didn’t have the ability to weather that without a lot of hardship. And it, you know, really probably aged me. 20 years during that 10-year period just because of the stress you know, when did you take a half a million dollars out it, you don’t just lose the half a million, but you also, ’cause it wasn’t a half a million of profit, you know, there was 3, 400, 300 $50,000 worth of expenses in there that I had to not only didn’t get the half a million. But I also had to pay, come up with the 350 to still take care of everybody. So yeah, it was really a double whammy, and over time it was extremely, extremely difficult to deal with.
Wow, I love your wow. We’ve already gotten two new points, I don’t think in about 70 episodes. I don’t think the importance of a mentor has come up before. So what’s interesting, there are a few interesting things about your mentor point. First, I totally agree with it. Secondly, I actually wrote my university thesis on the origin of professions and the professionalization of medicine, law, and divinity. And in the early 19th century, and, and one of the interesting things that I learned feels like another lifetime when I was studying that. One of the interesting things that I learned was professions like being a doctor, a lawyer have been around for a thousand years, but schools and universities to train them have only started in like the last couple of hundred years and the traditional way for a thousand years before universities or schools began to train people is mentorship like, oh, you wanted to be a doctor 500 years ago. You just found some doctor. You went up to him and said, can I follow you around for three years or until I know what I’m doing? And he would literally just go every young guy would just watch and be around with a doctor and everything until after a few years he figured it out.
Then he’d go on the notion of apprenticeships and, yeah. The same in every profession. And I feel like in our modern world, that’s basically been lost.
I agree. And I think it’s a lot more critical than we give it credit for. Everybody thinks, so I can go watch a YouTube video and figure it out. Yeah, but that tells you ideal circumstances that doesn’t prepare you for the real world. Well, now I know for a fact like I wouldn’t do anything without mentors at all. And the moment that I think I know everything, I’ve stopped learning because if I think I know it, then I’m not looking for new answers. And so one of the things that I learned is through my second hardship in the digital world, I used to always say, I’m smart and I’m a hard worker. And, the truth of the matter is if you believe that you’re smart then you think that you know it, you think you know. And so I started asking myself, what if I wasn’t smart? What if I don’t know what am I not seeing? Because I think I figured it out and what it has done is it has opened up my perspective to accept a lot of different viewpoints. I believe that it’s made me a lot more effective. It’s made me a lot more productive. It’s made me a lot more personable and can connect on a much deeper level because I really believe that everybody has a perspective and when shared, if you’re open to it, it really creates an entirely different viewpoint of many times the thing that we thought we knew better.
That is a powerful point. One of the powerful things about that is it sounds good in theory, and I agree with it one hundred percent. And practice, it’s hard when you think you’re smart, there’s a problem, you use your brain, you come to a conclusion, you’re like, obviously this is the right conclusion. But to be able to question yourself, say, wow, maybe my conclusion is maybe the choices I made in the past that led me to this situation were bad choices, it’s really hard to ask those questions.
Yeah, there’s really good book, called The Road Less Stupid and uh, wait, what is it called? The Road Less Stupid. The Road Less Stupid. I think it’s by Keith Cunningham. And he talks about like thinking time. And, uh, he has a whole list of questions and one of the ones that I remember very distinctly was, what am I not seeing? And when I think to myself, well, what if I’m not smart? What if I wasn’t smart? Uh, how does that open up? That also allows me to ask that question, what am I not seeing? And it’s really interesting. How many times asking that question will give you some new epiphanies that you had just kind of not even noticed because you were, like you said, naturally we think we’re right or we wouldn’t think that. So we just naturally believe that we’ve come to the correct conclusion, but the simple act of asking that question, what, what am I not seeing, or what am I not prepared for? Or what has to be true for me to believe this?
So, I love that I have my own version of that exercise that I’ll share with you now, which is, and actually I wrote a whole book on exactly this concept. It’s called “The Scorpion & The Frog”, available on Amazon.com . Here is this exercise I’ve developed about 15 years ago, and I do it almost every day of my life, which is the following. Whenever someone does anything, like people that I work with or friends relationship, people like in person, whenever anyone does something that I think is either bad, like malicious or stupid, I say to myself, let me assume that this person is neither a bad person nor stupid. Let’s assume they’re a good person and they’re smart. And with those two assumptions, let me invent 10 backstories that could have, that I don’t know, that I would have never had access to knowing that could explain why they did this thing that comes off to me as being evil or stupid, and getting into that habit is really powerful because what this does is it forces me where, okay, I think I’ve come to a conclusion he’s bad, he’s stupid, come to the conclusion, this exercise forces me to say, to question my assumptions and by creating other backstories and often it like so many times, it’s led to light bulb, moment, breakthrough insights that to help shed light on different ways of viewing the situation, thus strategically, different actions I need to take after that.
Yeah, that’s a really powerful way to reframe. Whatever your perception was, I agree with that. I think that’s, yeah, I’m gonna make notes about that when we’re done.
I’m also happy to send you a copy of the book as well. Sure. Um, sure. What I actually do in this book is I take a classic Fable, the Scorpion the Frog by asap, and then I retell it a whole bunch of times, but each time I retell the story, I create a widely different backstory, and so which the same facts, the same public story. So even with the same facts and the same public story, only by changing the backstory that you don’t know it changes who’s good and who’s bad. It changes like it changes the moral and the morality and it changes the meaning. And some of them, in one of, some of them, he’s on drugs. Another one they’re in Cahoot, the other one, their spies trying to do this other thing and this other one, he wants to revenge the other one for this. And once you come up with backstories, then, um, that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, it really opens your mind. And also I’d say, I think life is too easy if you just say he’s evil and he’s stupid. Like yeah, right. Life is a bit more complex than that.
Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. And and I do, I have the global belief that fundamentally people are good. I just truly believe that people mean to do well. Even people that have done very evil things, I haven’t lived their life, I haven’t experienced their experiences, and I do believe that if I lived their life and lived their experiences, I’m capable of doing what they did. And so for me, uh, that’s allowed me to, when you go through these hardships, it’s very easy to shame yourself and say, you know, not be your cheerleader and be very hard on yourself. And I came from a very abusive home. And so my coach asked me, how old were you when your dad stopped abusing you? And I said, I was 14, almost 15 years old. And he said, how old are you now? And I said, 48. And he said, so your father did it for the first 14 years of your life. You’ve done it for the next 34 years of your life. Wow, I already ready to let go of that. And so yeah, I’ve realized that we do a lot of things ’cause our subconscious is directing it based off our old stories and patterns. And so yeah, I really like the ability to reframe it and to fundamentally believe that people do the best they can with what they know at the time.
That takes the power and intensity to another level. I’m not sure I share your optimism on people, but what I would say is you being soft about people. I interpret that to mean you are a good person because I find generally good people assume other people, they’re good, while people who are bad assume other people are bad. So, I think only speaks highly of you. What I found is regardless of whether my model people, either good or bad is correct, it kind of doesn’t matter. Because these sort of assumptions of like assuming they’re good only leads you to better behavior and deeper and better understandings, which is why, regardless of the reality, I like working with the assumption that, yeah, they’re good, they’re just working with a different information, set a different context, a different set of incentives and and so on.
Yeah, agreed. I think we’re saying the same thing different way
Yeah. In different words. Yeah. That’s great. And saying, making the same point in very different ways, it like, helps elucidate and, and, and bring, bring, bring clarity to points.
Yeah. 100%. I agree. Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that. Okay. Yeah. Um, cool. So now back on track. The lesson that we were diving into was, I think was the importance of a mentor apprentice. One question I would have is, this world of mentors and apprentice died and you’re clearly advocating it. How do you go about finding out what’s the modern way to do that?
Um, yeah, so I think it gets back to, it gets back to that internal story that we have to pretend many time like we know. And we make stuff up so that we don’t feel stupid. And what I’ve found by being radically honest, you become the most interesting person in the room. You don’t have to be the most successful, you don’t have to be the most accomplished, the person who can tell the truth, is the most interesting person in the room. And when you can be radically honest about what you know, what you don’t know, what you’re afraid of, what you’re sure of those different things and are willing to speak it, understanding that some people might not agree and some will, people respect that. And so, I have found that if I just don’t know something and I know someone else does. I’m just radically honest about it and I don’t pretend. I just don’t know about this and I would love to know more. Is there a way that I could, you know, pay for some of your time or have a conversation with you around this? Or do you know someone you know that you could put me in contact with? That would be a good resource. And it goes back to that belief that people are good. I have never had anyone ever say ‘no, I don’t have time to do that’ or ‘no I’m too busy’. The people that are successful and have done well, they want to help other people and they respect other people, trying to get outside of their comfort zone. And so it’s in our head. That we’re ashamed. That we’re ashamed or feel ashamed of not knowing. It’s not in other people’s even, even though that’s the perception that we have.
Um, that’s interesting. There is something powerful about admitting you don’t know. And it’s like the classics, what little children say and also what, like why, what wise men say. And then there’s everyone in the middle pretending they know more than they actually know. I find it interesting that historically the role of the truth teller was given to the comic. Like the jester in the court of the king was like in medieval times. The one person that could speak the truth to the king, these folks, the truth to the king, he didn’t wanna hear would kill you unless you were the court jester, or you could make it funny. And then, and then, and then he would laugh and that would leak the truth. I think I personally try to be the radical truth teller. Like you, but my style is to make it funny. Yeah, because my life experience has taught me, if I try to tell people what I think is the truth as I see it and I’m not funny about it, they’ll get very angry and unhappy with me. But, but if I can make them laugh that then everyone just has a good time.
Yeah, another thing that I’ve learned too is, it came from some somatic work that I had done. Uh, they call it an unarguable truth. And so when you speak an unarguable truth, it means that it’s not arguable. So essentially, uh, it can’t be argued with. So if I was to accuse you of saying, oh you’re blaming me. And get mad at you for telling me the truth. Uh, that would be arguable because if I’m blaming you, then you could argue about it. But when you talk your emotions, if you say, I feel like this. Exactly. If I said, when you said that I felt unsafe, that’s unarguable, cause you can’t tell me how I feel. And that gets the unarguable truth across of what you said created this feeling in me. And it’s not blaming you for it. It’s telling you what was true for me. And so I believe, uh, in radical honesty, it requires practice for sure. And part of that practice is learning to speak unarguable truths. Otherwise, just you know vomiting facts on people, or what we feel is truth can be extremely dangerous and very unkind and untactful. But when we speak in unarguable terms, it actually creates a much, much deeper connection because people don’t assume how you feel, how you’ve let them know. And many, many times they didn’t mean it to come across the way that the person took it, and when you speak in an unarguable, they don’t have to defend their position. They can be like, no, okay, I understand what you’re saying, and I didn’t mean it that way.
Yeah you know I never heard the phrase unarguable truth before, but I use every day of my life, and very consciously on purpose, I realize the same concept that when you frame things in terms of your emotional reaction, you can, it’s a powerful way to get to the real issue because my way of making the same point is I found that basically nerds and smart people who I kind of surround myself with tend to really focus on, on finding the objective truth. So they’re so focused on finding what’s right, what’s wrong. Like they miss, oh my God. I’m like, I’m, I’m actually really angry because of A, B, C, D. Yeah. and, yeah okay. I like it. I might adopt that phrase, unarguable truth. So I love these big life lessons that, that have come from it. I’d love to take it a little bit more specific in regards to client management. Sure as well, which is usually the focus of the podcast. We’re being a bit more existential and philosophically, which I love, uh, wanna be a philosopher in my heart. So for practical tips because the story, we basically allied over it in a quick minute. But I’m curious to know, like for example, if you had had this mentor, are there different things that you think that the mentor would’ve advocated, like, very specifically, for example, were there any red flags that that happened early on that you ignored. And what are they, so we can help train people to notice these red flags.
Yeah. So when we, when we saw the fact that, several things on the job, uh, we’re not in the blueprints and there was discrepancies, we thought that they were going to get change orders and add that total to the bottom line. And they told us they would, but instead of us stopping until we got that in writing, we kept working. And so in the end, it didn’t matter what anyone said, what mattered was what was documented. And so, if it wasn’t documented what the solution was, they can’t, they’re not going to side with you and create a solution. That was for us to do in the moment. And so, for sure, I talked about this with other contractors after the fact who had done a lot of work, and they shared with me how they prevented those things. But that was, you know, in hindsight not foresight. And so for sure, I would say documentation is critical, no matter what, every time since then that we’ve had proper documentation, we’ve never been in trouble. We’ve never struggled to get what was owed to us unless the company just went out of business. And, um, so I would say. Yeah, that’s key.
Let’s talk about that documentation. It’s an obsession of mine, in my company with my teams, one of my own sayings that I like and forced into everyone’s brain as if it’s not written down and shared, it didn’t happen. And like that, there’s a few subtleties there, but one of them is worth explaining, which is you’re mentioning the importance of documenting. I agree. I would argue that. Documentation is a habit because what happens is if, if you just say, okay, okay, when there’s a change order, we’ll document, get it in writing. It’s far too easy to forget it or let it miss or no, or see this one’s too small. It’s not worth it, which is why I like with my teams building in the habit. Every little thing, no matter what, is documented and shared so that when the bigger change and ambiguities happen, like it’s already in everyone’s nature on the team to be like, oh yeah, of course, I’m making a Google doc and sharing about this.
Yeah. And what one of my mentors said, and I’d never even thought about it this way until after, the fact was he said, ‘A document’s not made for when things are going well, it is literally created for when there’s a problem’. If there’s no problem, everybody does their side and everyone gets paid and does their thing. The entire point of a contract is for things that don’t go well, so that you have something to fall back on. And so when there’s changes made to the job or the contract, those need to be documented. Otherwise, like you said, if it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen. And no leg to stand on. Go ahead.
As a side note, my version of that, why I say if it’s not documented, it happened, I always say if it’s documented and shared like because the share part is at least from how I work and my teams is, is important because it’s one thing if you say, oh yeah, I wrote this down and I have it in a piece of paper in my pocket. It’s very different when documented the change. Here it is to sent it to the client. They didn’t responded, acknowledging that like it’s much, much more solid by order of magnitude. Yes. Yeah, when it’s shared. I, and this is also not just as it a hard habit, I like your mentor’s point that you make the documents when times are good to prepare, to be ready for when times aren’t good. Because there’s this natural in sync in everyone. Times are good. We’re best friends. Everything’s smooth. We have been working together for four or five years. Yeah, you’ll take care of it. That’s literally what I thought.
You, you can trust us. And, so I, I like that approach,
Yeah. And because if you think about it, uh, because of how long the lawsuit drug out, there was a lot of change in personnel at that company. And so people that had said stuff. And meant it, they were no longer there. They had moved on, and so to go back and find them working at another company and get, you know, their recollection and all the different things just became very terrible. It was, it know, I didn’t pay for a college education ’cause I went straight to work in the trades. Um, and kind of earned my stripes that way. But I told everybody that that particular job was my university and I spent $500,000 at university to learn about the cost of a university education these days.
Yeah. Um, you know, that’s actually another point. I hadn’t thought about that point explicitly a whole bunch of new points about this episode. This is great, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that. Personnel will change in your counterparty and um, because like it’s just natural. People quit. And uh, therefore people who say things, even when they have like the best intentions, and they actually mean it. If someone said something verbally with great intentions and six months later he’s just no longer working at the company, like, guess what? If I were his replacement and like, as they were replacing the guy and the client was like, oh yeah, the guy before you verbally give me a handshake saying that you would take on the a hundred thousand dollars of expenses. I would be like, what the fuck? Like, like, are you trying to rip me off? Right. So, uh, and it was interesting to go back to like the scorpion frog. This is a good example about how like the people on the other side of you and the sage weren’t necessarily. Uh, bad people trying to rip you off, but it’s just that these sort of situations are natural. Yes, as a natural breathing ground for these massive misunderstandings. Yes, uh so, documentation is one specific thing that you would’ve done differently. Oh, actually there’s a minor detail. You threw this out in passing, but it’s worth calling attention to a comment that not just documenting, but like stopping the work until the changes are documented.
It provides a lot more sense of urgency because there’s such a tight timeline on those big projects. It forces decisions to be made. One way or the other, instead of the mudying the waters and you’re trying to work on it while you’re going through things. Ooh, yeah. it would’ve saved 10 years of a lawsuit and a lot of other things if we would’ve done that.
You know that is a good point that stopping work puts pressure on them to what you just told me. Just write it down and sign your name. Resolve it one way or the other. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I like that. I like that. Was there another specific action along the lines of the documentation that, that in retrospect, at this point you should have done X when you really did Y.
Yeah, I probably would’ve filed liens correctly. I did it within the timeframe, but if you do it, Walmart had already paid them, and so Walmart wasn’t going to also pay them and us if I would’ve filed the liens,, early instead of believing them, then they would’ve made sure that I was paid when they paid the general contractor. And so filing the legal paperwork, not just within the scope of time that you’re allowed to, but I’ve been very proactive with it. It would’ve ended up differently too. I don’t ever make the assumption that I would’ve gotten all the money that was owed to me, but I would’ve probably got. 75% of it and then not had the extra 250 grand in legal fees and all the extra of now having to come up with 500,000 or 400,000 to pay existing expenses outside of other work. And it just, instead of being a double whammy, it, it would’ve probably covered 75% of it, and I could have recovered much easier. And instead of what it did, it really made me say, ‘Hey, the risk isn’t worth the reward anymore’. And I stopped doing those big box stores and downsized the business, um, about two thirds and became a lot more profitable. Again, there was good that came from it, but I had lost my love for the work and I didn’t enjoy it anymore, and it was kind of the writing on the wall of I just wanted to be done.
Yeah. It’s, it’s interesting and it’s powerful. It’s part of the human experience about how one big terrible experience just poisons an entire space. Yeah, for you it’s like it has happened to me, like I’ve had friends that have dated girls and they just likegot happy relationships, all going great. And they just like Carter her cheating once. And then like, no matter what, no matter apology reconciliation, then there’s like one moment where like one moment that just emotionally changes it. And from that point, you can’t go back. I wanna mention that you’re filing the liens early. ’cause that’s an interesting point also. Because also like being nice and generous and trusting the other side. Then you’re like, nah, they’ll do it, they’ll do it. And like you kind of think, oh, I should just like do things like liens, like file liens at the last minute. But there, but two, two details on there I think are worth bringing out. One, it”s in the company’s interest to just say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Until like, until it’s too late. And so on. So, I’ve seen situations where like one side drags things out so long until some deadline that the other person didn’t realize expires. So it could be, it’s good to be aware of those sorts of techniques, of delaying things on purpose until something else happens. A second point, uh, that’s also worth mentioning is a lot of nice people I found treat corporations as though they’re people like, no, they’re really nice. No, they’ll do it. And so on, like a corporation is not a person. No. And, so like you want to give, be generous and give the benefit of the doubt to individual flesh and blood human beings. But that, you must have clear thinking in your mind when it’s like a bureaucracy corporate entity. Yeah, which by the way, makes it funnier. It makes it linguistically funny because the word corporation literally means like flesh and bud, like it comes from word corpus, like the Latin word for body. Yeah, so it makes it even ironic if we were crazy people, we could even think that that word was chosen on purpose to make naive individuals trusting of corporate entities. But, of course we’re not crazy people, so we wouldn’t think that. Right. To wrap up, are there any other lessons, insights, either on the big level about how you change, how you see the world about other practices beyond documentation that you implement as a result? Other little things that you noticed that you would’ve done differently, like calling the lean earlier rather than later, or any just general observation to wrap this up.
Um, another thing that I’ve learned is to ask myself a question. Can I be with this? And by using that question, essentially, can I be with this? Yeah, can I explain? Like, whether it’s a good situation or a bad, typically I ask it when things don’t feel like they’re going right. And it’s amazing how much clarity it brings to a lot of times where our mind has taken off and is playing a story. And for sure, that happened to me a lot during that entire, entire history of that thing. And so again. Yeah, I would say that the entire experience helped me learn to be more self-aware and understand that asking some very simple questions that give you another perspective, change the narrative that you’re telling and when you change the narrative that you’re telling, you have a lot more access to other resources that you have. Personally that you have shut off. And so yeah, I would say when you’re going through something, a disaster in business, figure out a way to ask yourself, can I be with this? ’cause you have to be with it anyways. The funny thing is it’s just in our mind that we’re trying to avoid it and that we’re not seeing the things that we need to see because they’re painful and we don’t wanna see ’em. The moment that you can go, okay, yes, this is a really shitty situation. There’s a lot of things I don’t like, but I still have to deal with it. So can I be with this? Can I be with the good, the bad, and the ugly of this situation? And in that place, you have a lot more resources to be resourceful and come up with a better solution. And I think before I learned to do that, a lot of situations, I didn’t get the best out of myself, uh, because those resources weren’t available to me without having that self-awareness.
I never thought about it quite like that before, but, uh, in these words, but it’s a powerful point that if you can ask yourself really simple questions, question your assumptions. It opens up new resources to you. Like, rather than solving this problem in this way, oh wow, I could solve it in a wildly different way. And um, it was very powerful and wise Words to end today’s podcast on. Um, Matt, thank you for your time. This was philosophical and I loved it. You are welcome back anytime, hopefully. Hopefully, you do not have that many more horror stories.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for having me and, and everyone who’s watched it. Uh, Suzanne, hope you enjoyed it and got as much out of it as we did until next time. ©2026 Client Horror Stories by Beloved by Clients – Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions – Resources – Beloved by Clients