Congratulations Jenny! Simon has awarded you the prize! He likes…”how she has accepted her limitation (scale, or perhaps the perception of scale) on one hand, but recognised her strength (client’s trust) on the other, and cultivated that. Great to hear that her patience won out!”

I was dubious and of course a bit crushed, feeling that I had lost her business.

Luckily I still had her trust and was able to convince her to keep me on as a consultant, and to help liaison with the designers (who I had also worked with for years). Not long into the project we started seeing signs that this young agency was in over their heads. Deadlines were not being met. Simple design integration was going terribly awry. We knew they were inexperienced, but what we didn’t known is that they were also outsourcing the development to India. In English. Except that these French marketing students didn’t have a particularly high level of English.

It was a mess. The client didn’t want to hear it…not at first anyway.

In a gesture of good faith, I made an attempt at helping the communication between the agency and their sub-contractors along…but bad dev work doesn’t translate, not in any language.

I told my client to cut her losses and let me throw together a team. I could save the project. She agreed, and I did. One month later the site was online, and I continued to work on that project for another year following the launch.

The perceived weakness: I wasn’t an “agency” and didn’t have marketing skills (i.e. a diploma). The turn-around: I stuck by her, was always honest in my opinions, and ultimately got the job done. A project on the brink of failure was turned into a huge success!

“Fear is fuel for freedom.”

As a performer, I’ve felt the proverbial butterflies before a performance. Early on, I learned that turning that energy into fuel for the performance made the performance more meaningful. That energy gives you the freedom to express your passion without reservation.

In the end, fear is our friend.