By: John Young
The other night I took my dog for a walk on a beautiful spring night, many stars gleaming above. I walked slowly admiring Orion’s belt. The winds quiet, a damp fragrance in the air. But in the distance, to the west, erratic flashes of lightning against a far-off cloudbank. A storm brewing and moving in on light breezes.
It was a Friday night, and I shouldn’t have been thinking about work, but this night sky reminded me of client relationships. Even when all is clear and star-struck, it’s the nature of things that problems of some sort will roll in.
The question is how will you manage them? How will you prepare? How will you respond? Can the client be guided through the storm? Can you share a shelter and wait out the weather?
My colleague Allison Brinkman said the above calls to mind a quote from Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo: “Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
To which I say, exactly. What defines us as humans is how we act and react under pressure.
As a small agency, we think about this a lot. We strive to collaborate with our clients. We are getting better at “best practices.” Sunrise Advertising has a history of keeping good clients, of long, mutually beneficial relationships and we aim to continue and build on that heritage.
So if it’s raining, we have umbrellas. And, well, another Sunrise ahead.