Who Do You Want to Do Business With? Keziah Robinson

Find out more about Keziah on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keziahrobinson/

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Interview Transcript

(Show Introduction: 00:00 - 08:48)

Lauren Kress  08:49

G’day everyone. Lauren Kress, the Business Scientist here and joining me this morning is Keziah Robinson. Keziah is over in Boston, which is why we're talking earlier today. Keziah, I'll just get you to start by explaining a little bit about what you do.

Keziah Robinson  09:04

Hi Lauren. Yeah, it's a little late right here, but I'm excited to be on. I'm a business coach and strategy consultant. I work with small business owners, everything from solopreneurs and startups up to people who are running a couple of hundred person farms. I hope people just take it up to the next level.

Lauren Kress  09:26

I know things in the States are a bit different to here, but I think we're all getting to a point where we're getting used to this idea that there's going to be this new normal in business. Everyone's been a bit shaken up. How are you finding things are now with your clients trying to adjust to what's happening?

Keziah Robinson  09:50

Well first, and I think everyone had this, there was just sort of a shock at the very beginning. Then I call the "what if" loop. People got very much into the "what-if's." What if they do this? What if you do that? Indecision, as you know from psychology research, the worst thing you can do is be in a state of uncertainty. I was with a lot of people. I was like, "Let's assume 80% of restaurants closed. Let's assume this kills X number of people. Let's take the worst-case scenario." Because you can plan in a worst-case scenario. You can't plan in a state of uncertainty. 

Keziah Robinson  10:24

What we're starting to see is now I think we're in a little bit of a false sense of security. They're starting to open things up. I think we're going to have a few more waves. That seems to be consistent if you talk to the scientists. But there tends to be a little bit of this, "Oh, we're going to open it up, it's all going to be back to normal." There's again that tendency, where I'm like, "Okay, fine, we can plan to the high scenario, we can plan to the low scenario." More importantly, you can come up with how you navigate the new information as it comes to you. But as things are, I would say people are generally pretty optimistic. I deal with people who are in the optimistic camp. My ideal clients are more positive leaning.

Lauren Kress  11:09

Well, this is kind of what we're talking about today. I know you've got a workshop that you're running later this week on this. We’re picking your brain a little bit beforehand about who do you want to do business with? Can you explain a little bit about what you mean by that?

Keziah Robinson  11:28

Well, one of the things I noticed with myself is that almost every client I have will come to me at some point. The ones who are in service businesses, we'll start going through their client list and they would always go, "Well, you don't understand. In my industry," whatever that industry is, "you just have to put up with people or sometimes people don't pay or sometimes..." It was one of those things, the first time I'm like, "Well, I was in the investment business. I've probably met with 1,000 companies in my career." I'm like, "This is not true across all industries." But I was like, "Maybe not." As I started to build out, I started to realize this pattern. That people were putting up with a lot of bad behaviour from their clients. They had bought into the idea that you just have to roll with it. You just have to take a certain amount of crap from your clients. 

Keziah Robinson  12:20

I'm really big on how do you manage your energy because I think that's the primary commodity. When we started to look at it, I was like, "Well, how do you feel after you get off the phone with a bad client? Do you want to pick up the phone and make three more calls? If you have employees, do you want to go be positive and support them?" No. It's like, you want to complain to somebody, you want to go get a coffee and it just starts to suck the energy out of your day. I started to understand how one bad client, even a couple just mediocre clients, that they were just going to drain the life out of you. That was really the difference. Because if you shed them--every time one of my clients, they'd cut those bad clients, they would have so much relief. No matter how much. 30% of revenue might have gone away and they would be feeling better. Then within a very short time, they start to attract great clients and they're making more money and they have more energy.

Lauren Kress  13:16

It's such a great point, I want to ask you more about this. But we just got a question from Peter Strohkorb. Hey, Peter, thanks for the question. How do you suggest business owners should go about identifying what the new normal in business will look like and what should they do about it? Going back, I guess to your best case, worst case comment there. Do you have any answers in relation to that?

Keziah Robinson  13:40

Well, I think one of the things to keep in mind is that you are not the economy. I say this to a lot of my clients when they start getting into, "What's going on outside of me?" You're not the economy. Peter, I hope you are. If you have a 50% market share in your industry, you're doing great. But most people, they’re asking this. So I'm like, "Okay, well, you're not your market." Let's look at what has happened. One of my clients does restaurant event planning. She has already launched two new ventures since that, that are both food-related and in support of the restaurant industry. They have not filled her revenue gap. She hasn't been able to hire back people. But she's continuing to find new ways to make money and to keep herself afloat. 

Keziah Robinson  14:27

I think that there's a lot of this sense that if you're waiting to figure out exactly what the new normal will look like, you're not going to be able to make decisions. It's really important to step back and go, "What's the value I provide? Is it necessary to be physically in contact with other people to provide that value? If it is, what's the next best alternative?" I think for restaurants, the restaurants that succeed are going to be the ones who figure out how to use social distancing and yet still generate the positive energy that we get I'm going to a place with other people. I'm not sure what that looks like. But you certainly want to look at who's having those conversations. And to be thinking for your own business just to keep in mind that hey, if you're positive; if you're moving forward; if you're being creative. If you're going out to your network and you're trying to understand what your customers and your clients need and how you can create value for them, things are magically--and it sounds terrible to say, but stuff will start to come your way. For most people, you can pick up share. Let somebody else decide to throw in the towel. Let somebody else decide to cut prices. Let somebody else decide that this is never going to work. You can be someone who picks up share.

Lauren Kress  15:45

Peter also said, "I love this line: 'You are not the economy.' Great answer. I guess it means to control what you can and don't sweat what you can't control. Thank you." Thanks, Peter. 

Keziah Robinson  15:53

That was brilliantly said. I was like, "Exactly." "Control that you can and just don't sweat the rest." That's so right.

Lauren Kress  16:02

I agree. I love that. Thanks Peter. Thanks for your comments. Anyone else who's listening and wants to ask a question, please feel free to throw it away during our chat. But Keziah, let's get back to this chat about bad clients. Because this is something I'm super passionate about as well. I remember once, I was at this networking event. We had to go around and everyone had to say what they did. It got kind of boring, because there were like 150 people that were saying, "Here's what I do and here's who I serve. This is the ideal client." I stood up and I was like, "Hands up, who wants more customers?" And everyone put their hand up. Then I was like, "Hands up, who thinks bad clients are a massive pain in the ass?" And like these people laughed and put their hand up. Really what we're doing here is we need to find the people who are not bad clients. Because they end up--and I've experienced this myself--they end up not just draining your energy, but they cost you money in the long run. Right?

Keziah Robinson  17:04

Well, it's at a minimum, the opportunity cost. My rough math is like one bad client costs you three good clients. The minimum is the opportunity cost. Often if you start to run in the numbers, they are negative. Especially if someone doesn't pay you. How much time do you have to spend tracking them down, re-filing the invoices, calling? Half the time then you'll hire somebody to do your collections for you, right? Like I've often [done]. "Well, we need to hire somebody to do accounts receivable." Well, if you did a better job setting up terms, screening clients at the beginning, maybe doing more of a contract basis, as opposed to better milestone billing. All of a sudden, you wouldn't have a problem with your accounts receivable. You wouldn't have people who aren't paying you. There's a lot of that where it's just about being more thoughtful about what makes a bad client. 

Keziah Robinson  18:08

Then what do you want? I think the biggest thing is people say, "I want someone who pays me on time." Well, what does "on time" mean? Okay, well have you set it up? Have you made it easy for them to pay you? Have you articulated at the beginning, what you mean by "on time"? I was saying, as anyone who's ever had to work for two people at the same time knows, that one person will come in and say, "I need this done ASAP." The other one will say, "Take your time," and they both mean, "I want it by Friday."

Lauren Kress  18:39

Yeah.

Keziah Robinson  18:42

You have to know going in. I think that can be hard, especially times like now when people get a little desperate. They're like, "Oh, every client is gold. If I'm too picky, I won't have any business." You have a lot of power. You're gifting somebody with your time, energy, your service. I'm sure you're awesome at your job. If you're not, you better get awesome at your job. Because you're not going to have one for very long. But if you're awesome at your job, you're awesome at your business, you're gifting them that in exchange for which they are going to give you money. It's a good transaction. But if you come into it, with an understanding of how much power you have and who else you could be serving, you start to do things like put terms out there or ask for deposits. Cut someone off the first time they don't pay, as opposed to continuing to serve them and hope that they're going to finally catch up. Things like that.

Lauren Kress  19:40

Yeah, I think the point you make about people might be feeling a bit desperate is a good one. I definitely went through this as well. Even pre-Coronavirus, when I felt less confident. Like maybe I'd had a bad few weeks and someone's finally interested. Or like my pipeline's been a bit low. I think this really happens when you're building a business that you're passionate about and enjoy and you love the work that you're doing. Because it can not feel like work, it's like any money feels like a good deal. I'm getting paid to do what I love. Like, "I would do this for free." I feel like we can get so into our business that the emotional involvement stops us from seeing the rational side of this is a transaction and a negotiation. Do you see that happen quite a lot?

Keziah Robinson  20:38

I know for myself. Even for this workshop, I have someone who called me up. She said, "I'm so excited to come to the workshop." I was like, "Oh, I'll send you a ticket." She was like, "No, I'm going to pay." But I just got so excited to have her. She's fantastic. It's a small group workshop and there's going to be a lot of opportunity for people to cross-connect there. I was just so excited she was coming. So I absolutely agree. One of the things that have been helpful for me is that we're always in the business of creating value. People pay you for creating value. Specifically--and this is a big one for a lot of my clients--people pay you for the value you create above and beyond the perceived next best alternative. It's really important to understand, as you're picking your clients and as you're growing, who are they and then not only what are their actual alternatives, but what's their perceived next best alternative? 

Keziah Robinson  21:38

I was talking to a woman who is a health coach. One of the challenges there is somebody perceived next best alternative is that they're going to buy that Peloton and finally lose all that weight. Or that they're going to stick to their New Year's resolution. There's a lot of how do you position yourself with that? But if you look at that value, then I would say, "Well, if it's real tangible, you can charge maybe 50% more than the value you create. You're just literally like, "You give me $100 and I will give you $150." That's fine. People will do that if you can prove that tie. The more amorphous it is and the further apart in time that we're looking at it, the greater the multiple. But you're usually still talking about three to five times. Maybe, I would say for coaching, you may be shooting for something closer to 10. 

Keziah Robinson  22:27

But if you're not charging anything and you're trying to tell me I'm going to get all this value, I'm thinking, "That doesn't make sense." It's like somebody said, "You're going to have a million times the value that I give you, that's coming back." That doesn't sound like a good deal. That sounds too good to be true. If you start thinking of it like that, you'd go, "Hey, I'm going to provide you with a ton of value. But you got to pay me some money and you will actually realize that value and it'll mean more to you because you had to pay for it." But like I said, I still tried to give somebody a ticket when she wanted to pay. None of us are perfect.

Lauren Kress  23:06

Well, I think it is, for me in my, like personal business journey, I've definitely found that so much of this relates to my mindset and my psychology and my self-awareness. If I'm doubting myself, then that affects the way that my business runs. I think it's really interesting how those two things interact. But I think you're so right in saying that if we don't put a price to something, then it's not valuable. If it's not valuable, it's not going to have an effect because people are perceiving that as something that's like, "Oh, yeah, okay. I had to pay for this." I think there's been a bunch of studies that have been done with people who don't pay or invest in losing weight or getting medicine or something. I'm not necessarily saying that medicine should be super expensive. But to have some sort of investment in it, actually makes it more effective. Where if you don't invest anything, then you know what I mean, right?

Keziah Robinson  24:24

I think that for me, the biggest thing that I had to come to with my clients was that I am in the business of seeing the potential that you do not see in yourself, as a business owner. Seeing the potential in a business that the business does not see in itself. That is how I help people level up. However, the owner and the business have to have some sense that they could be bigger, that they could be greater. They may not know how far, but there is some sense of how much greater they could be. I'm there to help them see how much bigger it can be and help them take it to that next level. 

Keziah Robinson  25:07

What I had to realize is I had clients, they were wonderful people. This is the thing about bad clients, is sometimes they are your friends. They're lovely people. There's somebody else's Prince Charming. They aren't necessarily bad clients for everyone. But I had some wonderful people who I enjoyed, but they didn't want to be any bigger than they were. They wanted things to be easier. They wanted this, they wanted to clean up, they wanted to stop having these issues with their employees, they wanted a bunch of little things. But they did not want to be bigger. It's like, "Well, I'm charging you money and you have to put in effort on top of it." It's like the cost to you is not just the money, but it's also this mental effort. If you only want to be 10% better, then why would you bother? 

Keziah Robinson  25:54

I started to go out and be much clearer about wanting to work with people who really were looking to the next stage of their life. If they were thinking of selling a business, who had dreams, who wanted to be somebody, who wanted their business to mean something, who cared about really big issues. I started communicating that and I started getting more full paying clients.

Lauren Kress  26:15

Yeah, yeah. I've had exactly the same experience where I can see the potential of someone's business. I'm like, "You're doing something so unique and you've got such a great story to tell. We can get you in the media super easily. Not just that." That's not really actually what I even do. But I could just see. I'm like, "This is great. Everyone needs this kind of thing." But some clients are just like, "No, no, we just want our operations to be a little bit smoother."

Keziah Robinson  26:52

Yeah great, I know some operations consultants. That's one thing I'm kind of like, "Okay, all if you're trying to find new software for your workflow management, I'll connect you to somebody." But that is really so much of it, is to realize who you want to work with. I had to come to terms with that. It meant that there are people I say "no" to. It meant that I started sounding--and this can be hard for women, it can be hard for anybody, for us to go out and start saying, "I only want to deal with people who want to play in the big leagues." I told you I was going to put a baseball reference in here. Sorry, I'm from Boston, it's not my fault.

Lauren Kress  28:10

And now back to the show.

Keziah Robinson  28:12

It feels weird you feel like, "Who am I?" Who am I to walk around saying I only want to deal with people who have enormous potential, I only want to deal with people who really are going to go somewhere, I only want to deal with people where we can collectively create a lot of value? I'm like, "Well, that's who I am. That's who I want to deal with." There's somebody else out there for the person who just wants their operations to run a little smoother and I want to make that connection too. Because they're entitled to it and there are other people who do that for a living. But I'm entitled to work with somebody who really wants to take it up to the next level.

Lauren Kress  28:53

Now I want to ask you something about providing some free value. Because we were talking about people need to pay for a service. We don't want to diminish the value of our services. Peter put in a little cheeky comment in here saying, "So Lauren, I shouldn't have given you a free copy of my book." Because Peter gave me a free copy of his book. Which is very kind, Peter. I'm looking forward to reading it. I think that there is a point where we do want to give something and then we've got to look at how we bring that into a pay transact. What are your thoughts on that? Do you usually advise businesses to look at providing free value first, in terms of the top of their funnel engagement?

Keziah Robinson  29:38

Yeah. I talked about where the paywall is. I don't know if that's an expression you guys use. But if you try to read a lot of newspapers they'll give you two or three free articles and then they hit you with the, "You have to subscribe," right? For Peter, let's just say Peter's gotten a shoutout five, six times already, so that book has probably paid for itself.

Keziah Robinson  30:03

What I do is with clients is I call it the value stack. Look at each point of engagement, whether that's marketing. You can use that even for when you think about what's the point of your marketing? If you're running a podcast, what's the point of it? You're looking at how does that create value and for whom? And how does that create value for you? I love to talk, so I'm really happy to be here. I don't love to write, so I would not build my marketing strategy around blog writing. But what I am doing is building it around this, then getting transcripts. Then working with a writer and then I'm a pretty good editor. Then I'm finding ways to create that. When I look at— I don't mind, I love to talk. This is so interesting. I love meeting you. I'm excited to meet Peter someday and you can send me your book for free too. We're having a great time and we're sharing great ideas and getting to put them out there. This is something that energizes me and it creates value for your audience and for you. The goal is to help you also further your brand and further your ambitions. 

Keziah Robinson  31:12

That's the kind of thing where when you're starting to think about, "What am I doing and how does it create value?" You begin to figure out where the paywall goes. A lot of times with service providers, what happened is they put so much into the proposal, that there's nothing left. The only thing left is a commodity piece. One of the things is I have a web developer and it's great. He went through this process with me and he's changed it. He realized that his real value was in the strategic stuff. He was delivering to people a proposal, it had sitemaps, it had personas, and he was doing all of the work for free, handing it to them. The only thing left was this commodity portion of the business. Effectively, working with him, he's been able to move that paywall. Now, the client is still getting an incredible amount of value, except that he's screening in clients who want to pay for that, who see the value. Because if they don't see the value when you're talking about it, they won't want to spend the money. 

Keziah Robinson  32:17

For me, I often do demo sessions. But I do demo sessions with referral partners. I'm using them because it's hard to explain what happens in coaching. If I'm going to ask you to put your neck out there and refer me--let's say you're a financial advisor and you're going to refer me to a family business that you've got a long-standing relationship with, I want you to understand what I'm doing. I don't view that as a waste of my time. I view that as it's way better than me taking you out to lunch. Even though the dollar value of my time is much higher than the cost of taking you to lunch, that's going to be more effective. A lot of it's thinking of it not in a calculating way, but in a calculating way about what are you creating value and being focused on doing that. You're going to see when you want to start, that people sort of volunteer to pay you. It's one of the weird things. You'll start to notice, as you get more, that people will start to ask, "What's the price point?" They will start to have that conversation far earlier than they were before when you were throwing a lot of free resources out there.

Lauren Kress  33:23

It's such a good point. I think it's definitely something I've seen a lot of agencies in particular do. Where they go, "Oh, here's this big pitch." Especially with the more traditional model, where you've got maybe 10 people working on different aspects of putting this pitch and this proposal together. And they know other people are going for the same pitch. I'm like, "You've just invested potentially $15,000, maybe more, in getting this proposal together and it might not go anywhere.” It's like there's been no investment from the client-side to go, "We’re coming to the table as well." I just think it's not sustainable to give so much away like that in the strategy space for free.

Keziah Robinson  34:14

Life is a grey market. One of the things that often happens, I don't do career coaching, but people occasionally come to me like friends from Business School. If you ever see a job description that you're like, "This is perfect." I was like, "It was written for somebody else." It's not Research Analyst Level Three, which there's like 50 of them in the company. That job description, there's already a candidate. They wrote it with someone in mind, they're probably internal. They might interview you, because they need to have an external candidate. The same thing happens with RFPs. People often are in there and you shouldn't be in a bake-off. You should be the only person. Realistically, you should be the only person in consideration. Because you should've been having those conversations earlier. 

Keziah Robinson  35:02

Now the bake-off doesn't hurt in the sense that sometimes it's a new practice area. You know you're not going to win it. But you might still begin to build a relationship. You're going to need to do that work eventually. Now you've got a proposal that you can pick up and take to somebody else, you can do that. But understanding what that is, you're not going to be disappointed. You still want to win the business. But you'll be thinking about differently. You'll probably put together a better proposal. Because you're thinking of it as, "Hey, what is going to be of most value to us and not just this client, but the other clients?" There are times when you might want to invest in it. But a lot of times if there's a bake-off, if there's a bunch of people in there, this is not the client you need. Go find other clients who are not thinking like that. Go find clients who are looking at what's special and unique about your business and where you can have a relationship. And by the time that proposal comes out, it was written for you.

Lauren Kress  35:58

Yeah. That's really, really well put. I completely agree. There will be people who play the RFP game. Hey, Sharon, how are you doing? Also, hello Floris. For some reason Floris, your name didn't pop up. But then Peter said something so I noticed. Keep chatting, guys. If you got any questions for Keziah, let us know. Otherwise, feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Lauren Kress  36:25

But going back to this RFP point. I see more and more really great consultants and really great agencies not going down that path. Some of the really notable agencies who did ads in the Super Bowl was it last year? There was the one about Crocodile Dundee, there is like a sequel or something, it was like an ad. I went and watched. I think it was Droga5, I always forget the name of the agency, but I saw them doing a speech. They were saying, "We never do RFPs." I'm like, "Wow, this is a big agency taking a stand on this, which is awesome." But I think it's almost like as an industry, especially in the business services space, you kind of need all of the service providers to be like, "No, we're not going to play this game anymore." Because then if everyone does that, then it kind of forces the clients to change the way they procure services. Where, at the moment, I feel like a lot of us are actually just making it hard for ourselves and other businesses as well.

Keziah Robinson  37:33

A lot of it is that what's your value above and beyond the perceived next best alternative and understanding the pressures. We were talking earlier about big clients versus smaller clients. I've done work with larger companies. But I love working with someone where that's the owner or owners. They don't need to check with anybody. They approve the contract. They write the checks. I show up. It doesn't go through purchasing and procurement. There aren't all these layers. Nobody in legal has to check. Still, I always suggest somebody in legal takes look at it. My lawyer certainly takes a look at it. But nobody in legal has to check. That's not the kind of engagement you're having. 

Keziah Robinson  38:20

When you're at a bigger company, it can often be one of those things, though. Again, who's actually making the decision and what are the criteria for the decision? And really getting that. Because we'll spend so much time pitching someone who is all in and they love you and they have no authority to actually sign off. Right? They love you. They're often responsible for this project. They're the person who's going to have to do all the work, but they actually don't have the authority. One of the things I do even with this is asking screening questions and being really clear in a gentle way, are there other people involved? Even if you're a marketing agency and you're pitching to a very small business, does the head of marketing, who is the person you're talking to, actually have the authority to make a decision? Or you're going to get three calls in and then it's like, "Got to bring this to Jane." "Who's Jane?" And it's like, "Oh, well, Jane's the COO." "I didn't realize that she needed to approve this."

Keziah Robinson  39:31

There's a lot of these questions we don't ask. We're so busy pitching at the beginning that we're not asking the questions to say, "Is this going to be a good fit? Do I have enough information to make decisions? Do I have enough information to decide whether I'm going to put in the proposal?" As I said, it's calculating, in the sense that you're going to have to be very thoughtful about it. But it's not in the sense that you're not building a relationship. You really are trying to build a relationship. I'll often look at when I get engaged with somebody who's not at the top of the stack. I'll often look and they're going to be someplace else. 

Keziah Robinson  40:10

This conversation, it's just investment for the future. I'm not going to pitch them something that they are going to want to buy. I've done this. I've sent people a proposal that I know it's not going to fly. It's close enough that I didn't turf it. But I just will give them something that is not what they were specifically asking for so that they will not hire me. But we will have engaged the relationship. I don't do that very often, because as I get better and better about who I'm even going to talk to, that's not the dynamic. But I don't mind that. I don't necessarily view that as a loss. But I've accounted for the effort and energy and time I'm putting in correctly and put it into the right bucket. 

Lauren Kress  40:54

I think it's Floris. Sorry, Floris. I keep getting LinkedIn User, so I'm not sure who's commenting on this. But I think it's Floris who said, "Understanding the decision-making process is an integral part of B2B sales. So how do you investigate and how do you find who is on top of the stack?" We might finish with that question, Keziah. Because we've got to wrap up soon. But I think it's a great question to wrap up what you were saying about who those stakeholders are.

Keziah Robinson  41:20

A lot of times it's ask, "Oh, so who do you work with? And how is your organization set up?" Or you could normalize. You could very much go, "Yeah, I know that in some organization sales reports to the CEO, sometimes you guys are your separate thing. Sometimes you report to the revenue officer." But if you start to give somebody a license to talk about themselves, they'll usually share. If they're super secretive, that's a bad sign. If someone's like, "I can't tell you who actually makes decisions here." That's what?

Lauren Kress  41:57

Not someone you want to talk to.

Keziah Robinson  42:00

It's a dictator who is not going to approve anything. Or they don't know. That happens sometimes. A lot of it is just really that relationship building. Often, and this is a classic sales [move], when you call someone, "I'm not sure I have the right person. Can you help me with this? Can I just get 30 seconds your time? I'm not sure that this is the right contact. Can you help me?" And you ask for the person who would approve it, you ask the decision-maker. It is a lot about that really showing interest in whoever. Half the time an assistant will know more. If somebody gives you a calling [card] and their asking for their office gives you a chance to talk to their assistant, often that person knows actually who makes decisions and they'll give you more. It depends on the size of the sale and also the complexity. But it's better just to ask. And honestly, if somebody gets offended at the idea that you're just asking, "Well, what happens after we file this proposal? Or are there other people who we should be looping in?" If they get offended by that they're going to be a bad client anyway.

Lauren Kress  43:10

Yeah.

Keziah Robinson  43:11

Just put up your hands and walk away.

Lauren Kress  43:14

It's better to know then, than three calls later, like you said. Right?

Keziah Robinson  43:19

Right. Plenty of fish in the sea. If you really have a lot of value, you're doing something great. You're really there to help. If they're not going to receive that help from you. You don't have, "What's your market share?" Go find somebody else. I think that that can be really hard. Because we want to win and we want each person to love us. But it's like basketball. You won't be leading the whole time, right? You're going to have to let somebody get a few points in here, so you can get the ball back and you can win the game. Sometimes you got to let a client go, let a prospect go so that you can move forward and you can really invest your energy in great clients.

Lauren Kress  44:10

100%. I love that. Keziah, this has been so awesome. I love that you got a basketball analogy in there as well, by the way.

Keziah Robinson  44:17

Well you brought up the Super Bowl. 

Lauren Kress  44:22

Keziah, if people want to find out more about you, about the work that you're doing, what's the best way for them to reach out and get in touch?

Keziah Robinson  44:29

The best way is to find me on LinkedIn. I have a pretty distinctive name so I'm pretty much the only one who will show up. You can also go to my website which is www.cassia-partners.com. That's C-A-S-S-I-A dash partners dot com. Cassia Partners is also on Facebook.

Lauren Kress  44:47

Awesome. Keziah, do you work primarily with people in the States or do you work with people around the world as well?

Keziah Robinson  44:53

I've done work with people all over. It's interesting that I previously did a lot of in-person work, so that would typically limit me to maybe the U.K. and things like that. But now with what's gone on with COVID, I've had to expand my virtual and so I can take on clients in a lot of other geographies.

Lauren Kress  45:13

Fantastic. That's awesome. Keziah, thanks again. It was great to chat with you. I had a lot of fun.

Keziah Robinson  45:18

Thanks so much, Lauren.

Lauren Kress  45:19

Thanks, everyone for listening. Thanks for your comments. See you soon.