You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

Tasked with writing blog posts for the new website, I have been more in tune with stories and small lessons throughout my days and how I might find some writing in them that would be useful to my readers.

Wendy, my 25-year associate and I were chatting about a client who had shown such a different side of himself after introducing my beautiful goldendoodle pup, Livvy to him. While our conversation at the time was about business and timing and agreements and all the business at hand, the moment he set eyes on Livvy and cooed, and fawned and changed his voice to reflect his strong love of dogs, I started seeing him through different eyes. I truly had never seen this side of him. As we walked out of my remote office backyard, he shared his own new puppy stories; and even though I’ve known this client for almost 30 years, we just connected on a different level than before. It was pleasant and delightful, sending a breath of fresh air into difficult and heavy business tax-talk.

As I told the story, Wendy told me about a client of hers who always rushed in and seemed a bit gruff and how that all changed one day when her Mustang parked out in front became the topic of their conversation. From that moment on, their business relationship had a flip side to it…a personal common interest side where eyes lit up while chatting about muscle cars.

This got me thinking about ways to add a more personalized touch to new client interviews, early in the process. I’m thinking it could be just as simple as pausing a moment during the business dialogue and simply taking a few moments to very directly visit something we might have in common together. I think this will give future business relationships a lighter and fresher side. I plan on reaching out to my existing clients and find a way to discover some mutual “music” we might both like, or a mutual passion in gardening…well I hope you get the picture and while I have your attention lol here’s a cute photo of Ms. Livvy: