Where did the idea for Clienting come from? Well, as it towns out, it’s an interesting story of growth for me as a creative person. Let me take you back to a simpler time before 9/11, before the internet as we know it, before my kids were too big to pick up and strap into a car seat.
Transcript:
Hey there it’s Grant, you know, superheroes have origin stories, right? Well, so do podcasts. Welcome to clienting. [Intro] All right, everybody. It’s your old pal Grant Sanders today from clienting and from the sand agency here on lovely Nantucket. It’s a beautiful, beautiful June day on Nantucket and, uh, I would love for you all to come and pay a visit.
I know it’s expensive and it’s a pain in the neck to get here. I commuted five hours each way for 20 years. And, uh, so I know what a pain in the neck it is, but, you know, come on down. I’ll I will buy you a cup of coffee and a. And show you the place where the locals hang out or the place that the locals won’t tell anyone else about.
Anyway, today on clienting we’re going to talk about how clienting came to be, how. You know, what was the idea? How did we decide to create this thing called clienting? And what is it really? Is it a podcast? Is it a bunch of content? Is it may be, oh, I don’t know something that gets published maybe in the fall.
Let’s see, let’s talk about that. But, so the story of clienting goes back many years, I would say 20. Hmm, 23 years, right? It goes back to 1999 and I’m looking at my notes here. It started. Okay. Well, back in 1999, this was when the internet was not really the internet we know today, right? It was, um, we all had dial up modems, right?
It was, uh, it made that sound. [Dial up modem] you know, we had dial up modems and we, and we had, we didn’t have Facebook. No, we didn’t have, um, anything like that. We had this, these stuff, these things called list serves. Does anybody remember list serves?
And they, you know, you could join a list serve on. Topics you could join the star Trek list serve or the, you know, the New York city list serve. But I joined a list serve called AdList. This is, uh, this was, um, a great group of ad creatives and ad strategy people. And there were even a couple of account executives in there.
Um, And, you know, add list. I think I started on add list in 1998 or 1999. Um, and this is going back some years now, folks, um, and Atlas was started by somebody named Ask Wappling. Um, she lives out on the west coast now, but she used to be. She used to live in Europe. And, um, back in the good old days AdList had, um, a member in just about every time zone.
You know, we had folks in the far east, and we had folks in the UK and folks on the west coast and some folks in Canada and I still. Talk to a lot of those folks, those people, um, we’re friends on Facebook. We are, you know, we still have a, uh, Google groups called AdList and we share ideas and thoughts every now and then, but, you know, Atlas was a great place to talk about your triumphs.
Right. And, um, we, we also talked about our defeats and one of the things we talked a lot about where client. You know, we said, okay, you know, you will never believe what a client did today. So-and-so did this. And it was usually a, you know, face Palm kind of moment for a lot of people. Oh, when will these clients ever learn not to do X.
And, um, you know, they used to be the saying in the ad business, it, it, it, and I think some people still say it, um, this would be a great business if we could just figure out a way to get rid of the clients. Um, it’s a little bit of a cynical thing to say, you know, because let’s face it, you folks, you clients, you put the money in our pockets so that we can do the things we want to do.
Right. But, you know, We were in a little listserv that we could vent and share emails with each other. I think I have an old hard drive somewhere in my basement that still has the original AdList emails on it somewhere. I should go check that out. Anyway, this is where the germ of clienting came from.
You know, um, somebody said, you know, I wish clients could go to school to learn how to be a client. Because there are certain things that, that some great clients naturally do. They give input a certain way. They give feedback a certain way. They evaluate creative work a certain way. And you know, we’ll talk about all that stuff in future podcast episodes.
You know, at the time, I don’t know if it was me or somebody else on AdList said, you know, what we really need is a guide on how to be a client. And we need to get that in the hands of as many clients as we can. And, you know, being the caffeinated creative guy that I was, I just, you know, I just put a pot of coffee on and pulled an all nighter or two, and I wrote a guide on how to be a client and it wasn’t terribly good.
But it was fun to read, you know, it was fun to, um, it was fun to share with my AdList friends and this, you know, it wasn’t a long thing. It was maybe, I don’t know, 6,000 words. It wasn’t big. It was like a long brochure or a very, very short booklet. It wasn’t a book. It was, um, it was a guide, you know, like a guide book, but, uh, You know, it, it, it served its purpose.
It got us all thinking. And then, you know, I put, I put that guide down. I don’t even know if I have a copy of that somewhere. I probably have it on that same hard drive I was talking about earlier. Um, and this was around the time when clients from hell came out and we were like, yeah, we had a great idea.
They, they copied her idea and you know, clients from hell. I don’t know if everybody is familiar with it, but it’s basically a website where if you have a really awful client story, you can share it with everybody and everybody can just sort of roll their eyes and laugh and say, You silly clients and, um, that’s kind of what, uh, how to be a client was in the early days.
It was, it was a way to, um, excuse the expression, take the piss out of the clients without them knowing it or without them knowing who did it. Um, and I don’t know if a single client ever got a hold of that thing that I created, but. I enjoyed writing it, it, it was cathartic and it allowed me to really think about the work I do and how I want it perceived by other people.
Uh, And so fast forward a few years, I am spending less time on Nantucket. I’m spending more time in airports and on ferry boats and in hotel rooms. And I have find that I have a lot of time on my hands and I finally land a gig with a good size mid-size ad agency. Um, and. They set me up in an apartment and I am, I am commuting back and forth every week.
And it is, you know, it’s a pretty good gig, but I’m living alone. I don’t have any friends in Connecticut. You know, I have my coworkers, but you know, you can’t, can’t go hang out with all your coworkers all the time, you know, it’s that I didn’t have any quote, unquote friends that I could hang out with.
Like I do on Nantucket, you know, like, like my really amazing Nantucket pals. Um, back in the day, when I, when I used to drink. I closed down a lot of bars with a lot of my Nantucket friends. And, you know, when I was traveling back and forth to Connecticut working for this ad agency, I was drinking a lot then too.
And I used to, um, before I got the apartment, I used to stay in hotels and the hotels had bars and I would do all my freelance work at the bar that was. But, you know, I stopped drinking and I kept the commute and I had a lot of time on my hands and I thought, you know what? That little booklet that I wrote before, that was nothing.
I think I could turn this into a real book, something that, you know, I, and it was, it, my heart was in the wrong place with this project because I want it to last. Right. Um, I wanted to make clients feel bad for how they made me feel sometimes because you know, there, there have been some client relationships that have been difficult, many, many, many good ones, many, many, many good ones, but a few where I just want to.
You know, I wasn’t in a, I wasn’t in a position to say goodbye to a client at that time I had tuition bills to pay and I just needed to say yes, sir. And no ma’am and, and do the work. Right. But it was, it was an interesting time. So I started writing this guide and the working title was “Approve This.” Approved this, not very nice.
And this thing started out to be not very nice. And as I was, as I was writing it, I was getting up really early, like 4 45 every day. And I would write for an hour or an hour and a half. And, you know, at the end of the week I would write, I would read everything I had written for that week. And, um, Some of it was very cringy.
You know, I really didn’t like myself for writing some of the things I was writing about clients. And then, uh, and then the light bulb went on. It was around this time that I started.
Consuming a huge amount of stuff to make myself a better creative person. Okay. I did webinars. Um, I did a webinar with Luke Sullivan who wrote the, who wrote the book. Hey, Whipple, squeeze this. I wonder where that, uh, approved this title came from. Hmm. Hey, Whipple, squeeze this anyway. Um, that’s another reason I couldn’t use that title, even though it was.
It was funny. Um, so I attended a webinar with Luke Sullivan. I traded emails with Luke. We talked about creative briefs and, you know, we talked about creativity and, you know, smart, smart guy, really, really nice guy, very, very, very knowledgeable, and also attended a webinar that was put on by Tracy Wong. Uh, out from Seattle, he, he has an agency called Wong Doody.
It’s relatively famous. They used to have a, a reality TV show about, um, about a pitch that was happening at Wong Doody. That was really cool. And since then I’ve met a couple of really awesome Wong Doody folks. Um, I hope they’re listening to this. I’m gonna send them over. Um, but I, I listened to a webinar where I watched a webinar, um, by Tracy Wong and he was talking about how to give good feedback.
And I started to sort of synthesize the things I was learning from Luke and from Tracy. And I started to think, you know what? This is great stuff too, to know as a creative director, but you know, who really needs to know this stuff. Uh, clients do clients need to know. How to give good feedback, how, how important creative is, how negative things stick in your head better than positive things do, how tension is really important.
So you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t walk away from things that are, that are tense. That create tension. Tension is really, really super important for creativity. And also around that time. I started to read everything I could on creativity and leadership and creative leadership. So Todd Henry wrote a book called Herding Tigers.
And that was a fantastic book for leading creative people. But then all of a sudden I started thinking, yeah, and you know what, clients need to know this stuff too, because Todd Henry was, was talking a lot about, you know, what makes creative people creative and, and how. You know, they’re a little bit more difficult to lead than the average, um, employee.
Right. And he had a great point of view on that. And I thought, you know, clients should know this about creative people, how they have outsized egos, but also outsized insecurities together in the same bundle. How, how inconvenient is that? Right. But clients don’t know. Because, you know, they see the work, but they don’t work with the people who do the work right now.
Usually not. Um, I read a book called Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. He wrote the book, start with why, but leaders eat last, I think is his best book because it talks about how leadership is really not telling people what to do. It’s asking people, what can I do now? And that really resonated with me and also, you know, clients as leaders, because they do lead the creative process.
They lead with their wallets and they lead with their strategies and they lead with their budgets. Um, and, and with their product information and their research, um, as leaders. I would love for clients to have that same mindset. How can I help you do your job? Um, I read a book called Creativity, Inc by, by Ed Catmull.
Um, he was instrumental in starting, um, the animation studio Pixar. Right. And fantastic book. If you, if you want to know that the guts of creativity, the, the, the real mechanisms that happen in people’s brains, um, That’s a good one. Uh, another good book that I read at the time was a book called Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Um, it’s sort of the quintessential book on excellence and achieving excellence, achieving a state of flow, either in creativity, in music, in sport. Um, but he talks about what you need to do or what one needs to do in order to achieve a state of flow, which was very cool. And then finally the last book that really really had an impact on me.
And I thought, okay, you know, this, this is something that clients need to know. And it’s, it’s a book by a guy named Michael Bungay Stanier called the Coaching Habit. And this one just knocked me over because I was leading a team at the time. When I read this book, I was leading a team of 10 people and.
You know, telling creative people what to do is not nearly as productive and effective as coaching them and helping them find their voice, find their muse, right. Being a good coach. How can I help? How can I help? How can, how can I make you a better creative person? How can I, what can I. So all of those books and webinars and I’m, you know, also some podcasts that I listened to, um, Todd Henry also has a great podcast on creativity.
Um, it, I all, all, all of a sudden I started to synthesize this stuff and think, okay, you know, this sarcastic, awful book that I’ve been writing, um, it really shouldn’t be sarcastic and awful. It should. It should be a creative person, earnestly trying to help clients understand creative people, because the sooner we can better understand one another, the sooner we can do great work.
So I put that all together and I started to write in a fresh way. And you know, I was still getting up at four 30 in the morning. I was still commuting back and forth. And, um, it was around that time, just before that I started to write a blog and I’m not sure writing a blog was such a good idea because I started to put my opinions out there.
And the agency for whom I worked, the management of the agency was not terribly. Um, there were, it made them a little nervous that I was going to put my thoughts out there for everybody to read about advertising, about creativity, about, you know, all of this stuff. And so, you know, I got pulled into a, a meeting with three members of the management team and.
Um, it was, it was, it was funny at the time, not terribly, it was a little bit stressful, but, uh, I can look back and laugh at it because one member of the management team did not want me to write a blog at all, but that person realized quickly that there’s nothing they could do to stop me, you know, aside from taking away my computer, which I owned at the time.
So. Try to do that. Um, and, uh, another member of the management team, um, really wanted me to write this blog because they were a writer and they understood the compulsion to write. And another member of the management team really wanted me to stay away from certain subjects. You know, it was sort of like the happy medium.
So. One. You know, th they decided that the person who was in the middle, the happy medium was going to be my editor. And they would look at my work and give me some pointers. And because the guy who was the writer, he didn’t necessarily, uh, uh, want to censor me at all. And the, the other, um, the other member of the management team, um, he really didn’t want me to.
A word. So, um, realizing that I. Wasn’t really to be stopped. We, we agreed that this, this one person who was a very, very friendly editor and a super smart business person and somebody who I really enjoyed working with, I would send this person my drafts and they would send back comments. And there was only really one blog post, um, that, that got, um, nixed entire.
Um, and I, you know, I published that blog post after I left that agency, um, about four or five years later. So no harm, no foul. Um, I can tell you, it was a blog post about how fewer people are better for the creative process, better, you know, more cost-effective for the client, then more people. And that every time you add an extra person to a project, You basically multiply the cost of that project by 1.7, because of the multiplier effect of communications within the.
Anyway, you can find that on my blog on medium, the blog that I wrote back then, and I, I I’ve kept up with it relatively well, although I haven’t added to it recently, the blog is called. Okay. Here’s the thing. So search for. Okay. Here’s the thing. And my name grant Sanders, and you’ll find that blog. There’s a few little fun tidbits in there that you might enjoy anyway.
That’s how. Clienting came to be. I started to write this book and, um, the, the most of the book took me. The better part of eight months to write, because I was just writing a little bit every day, not writing on the weekends, I’m editing myself. Now I have this great editor who happens to be my, my offspring.
Um, Sunny Sanders. You’ll hear Sonny Sanders name in the credits of this podcast because, um, well, They are my superhero. Um, they save me every single day, sunny Sanders. I say they, because, um, my offspring is non-binary and their pronouns are they them? So my pronouns are he him, I’m kind of old school, but I appreciate, and, um, and honor everyone’s pronouns the way they want them to be.
So Sunny is they them and they will get their pronouns the way they want. Um, but an amazing, amazing editor and proofreader, and they are looking over the manuscript for the book right now. So as you might have imagined, I am writing are finishing up the writing of this book. Clienting and I am doing this podcast to sort of get people excited.
Maybe buying the book someday, someday in the near future. So if you want more news on the book on clienting, um, you know, subscribe to the email list, send me an email. I’ll add you to the email list. Um, you know, w it’s we’re just getting started folks. This is episode number 11, by the way of our podcast who knew we would do so many episodes?
I did. And I, I S. Decided that we were going to do one a week. Right. So that’s where clienting came from. It started out as a joke. Then I started it, turned into a weapon and then it started into a real earnest, thoughtful and kind heart. Guide for clients who want to do better work with creative people.
And I hope that everyone sees it in the spirit of which it was created. Clienting okay. So that’s it for today, everybody. Uh, this is. Pal grant Sanders. Um, please, if you have a question, send me an email, put a comment on the website, love to get those comments. Um, and, uh, until next time be well.