#236 The 5-minute habit that will save you 5-figure problems
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You know that moment when a client says, “While I have you, can we just add one more thing?” and you say yes because you are helpful and it feels small. Then two weeks later you are doing double the work, the timeline is off, and the client is confused about the invoice. That is what we are fixing today.
I want to share one habit that sounds almost too simple, but it prevents some of the most expensive problems I see in businesses.
The habit that saves businesses quietly
The habit is this: put it in writing.
Not a novel. Not a legal letter. Just a short written follow up after the conversations that matter. A quick email. A message in your project management tool. A note in your CRM. Something that captures what was agreed, what is happening next, and what it means in practical terms.
People hear things differently. They remember things differently. And when you are busy, it is very easy for a casual conversation to turn into a firm expectation without anyone realising it.
Clarity is a client experience tool
Most business issues are not caused by bad people but by unclear expectations.
Think about the classic client call where ideas are flying and everyone is excited. The client says, “Oh and could we also add this?” and you say, “Yes, we can do that.” In the moment it feels helpful. But if that extra work has a cost, a timeline impact, or changes the scope, and you do not capture it in writing, you have just created a gap. And gaps turn into friction.
A simple follow up closes the gap. “Great chatting today. Confirming we are adding X. This will add Y to the timeline and the fee will be Z. Let me know if you would like me to proceed.” That one message can save you hours of awkward conversations and potentially legal issues.
Proactive beats reactive every time
This habit is not about being formal for the sake of it. It is about staying on the front foot.
When you put things in writing, you are managing expectations as you go, not trying to fix them after they have already turned into a problem. It protects your time, your energy, and your relationships. It also gives you a clear record if something becomes disputed later, which is where the five figure problems tend to show up.
I hear two objections all the time. “I don’t want to seem distrustful” and “I don’t have time.”
The distrustful one is easy to reframe. A written follow up is not a lack of trust. It is professional communication. It is making sure you and the other person are aligned. Most clients actually appreciate it because it makes them feel looked after and clear.
The time one is also simple. You do not have time not to do it. Three to five minutes now is cheaper than three to five hours later, cleaning up confusion, rewriting scope, renegotiating fees, or dealing with complaints.
Make it easy, not perfect
Use whatever method you will actually stick to. A quick email. A voice note you transcribe. A templated follow up you paste in and edit. I like the idea of giving yourself a short buffer after calls to capture the main points while it is fresh. It becomes a rhythm, not a task you dread.
The problems you prevent are the ones you never see
I have seen small misunderstandings with clients, contractors, and team members turn into serious issues simply because there was nothing in writing. No record of what was agreed. No clarity on expectations. No paper trail to support a calm resolution.
This is why I call it a five minute habit that prevents five figure problems.
It is simple, but it is powerful. And if you are building a business that you want to feel proud of, calm in, and protected by, this is one of the easiest places to start.
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Thank you for joining me. In today's episode, I'm going to talk to you about a habit that you can implement [00:01:00] in your business now that can save you so much time, energy, and money later. And when I tell you what this habit is, my guess is you'll initially think, "Gosh, Tracey, that is so basic.
don't see where the value is." Let's see. The habit I'm talking about is a process that you have in your business where you write things down. And I'm not talking about a to-do list or having a notepad by your bed in case you're thinking of something before sleep. That's not the writing down I'm talking about.
I'm talking about processes where when something meaningful or significant happens in your business with your key people, clients, employees, contractors. When something meaningful or significant happens or a meaningful or significant conversation is had, have a process to write it down. That's the habit, writing it down.
I'm going to unpack that for you today, what exactly it means, because it sounds so simple, and it can be, but it's probably [00:02:00] not what you think. I'm going to talk to you about what I mean. I'm going to talk to you about why it's important, what it can cost you if you don't do it, and then I'm going to explore some of the reasons I hear business owners share with me as to why they don't do it.
So let's start with what do I mean by writing it down? Do I mean everything, Tracey? Do you mean every conversation? No, I don't. But as business owners, I'm asking you to be discerning. We run our businesses. We manage people. We manage our relationships with our clients, with our contractors, with our stakeholders, with our employees.
We know very well as business owners what is significant and what isn't. My suggestion here is to throw the net a little wider, though, because what we can think is day-to-day could potentially, to an independent third party like me, if something goes wrong and you need to come and seek some help, what you think is insignificant may well be more important than you thought.
Diving into this, let's talk about our clients. Once we've had beautiful [00:03:00] conversations with our clients, we've onboarded our client, and we're in the throes of service delivery, it's very easy to be so focused on delivery and to be so focused on what we're doing that we're not paying real attention to the conversations we're having with our clients, because we've done it so often.
This is our jam. This is what we do. This is our passion. But often for the client, it can be the first time that they've engaged with a service provider like us, so to them, it's all very new. So the language that we use matters and the way we're having the conversations matter. And what I hear very often is that there are assumptions made here where business owners assume that because they've got their sleeves rolled up and they're in the thick of doing the work, that the client knows very well that the next step will be X, then it'll be Y, then they'll have a chance to engage, for example.
The client doesn't necessarily know that, so the client can sometimes feel left out in the cold and feel like the communication is poor because they're not aware of where you are in the process or what the next steps are going to be. [00:04:00] So the communication is really important. When we dive in though, and we start paying attention to this communication and we're having these conversations to support the client, sometimes Something can be said that we don't think is significant, but the client does, or we walk away from the situation having heard two different things.
This is the habit I'm talking about and the value and the magic that happens when we have a process and a habit of following up in writing. So writing it down. So writing it down in our file notes might be one step, but if there is another party involved and it is significant, having a process where we're sending that email out to confirm, and I talk to my clients about this all the time, and I say, "Email is your friend."
In this day and age, email is your friend because whatever email host we're using, there'll be a record of it. If we don't have a digital file where we're printing and saving, digitally printing and saving or converting to PDF, if something happens later, we can do a search and go back and find the emails so they're there.
So if a client says to you something like, " That's really [00:05:00] great. Will that be finished by next Friday? Because I've got photographers booked on Monday." And you say, "Yeah, yeah, should be fine. I'll let you know." And you're in the throes of doing the work. Well, the client's taken that as gospel and they've gone and booked the photographer.
So when Thursday rolls around and you say, "Look, I'm gonna need another few days with this for this reason," and they say, " Oh, well now I'm gonna have cancellation fees because I've booked the photographer." You can see where this gets murky and if we have a written record, so after that the client has said to you, "Will this be ready by next Friday?"
And you say, "Yeah, it should be fine." If you've developed a habit, you'll pause and ask yourself, "Was that significant?" It may well have been, and so you'll send an email and you'll say, "Hi Tracey," lovely client. "Great to chat to you this morning. You asked me whether this is going to be ready by next Friday.
It may be, but I can't confirm yet because this is the stage I'm at. I'll let you know." That email probably took 60 seconds and you've managed the expectations of the client such that they now know to wait before they book the photographer, for example. That's [00:06:00] one example off the top of my head that does come up when my business owner clients reach out to me to seek advice because there's a point of friction that has arisen between them and a client, and it all boils down to those misaligned expectations.
And when we dive deeper, it's the communication piece. And so if we have the habit of following up with the email just to confirm, because when we start talking completion dates or when clients start pressing because they're under time constraints, all of a sudden that takes on a different sense of significance You can see how the small habit of putting it in writing and sending out that very short, quick, lovely email can help navigate and guide the relationship and manage those expectations.
That's one example that I think will resonate with so many of you, and if not that particular point of service, there'll be other service areas or other delivery points in your business where you'll be listening to this thinking, "Yes, I can see how that happens. Yes, that's right." Now think about our team [00:07:00] members.
This is another area where having the written record is so important because we're talking to our team members often, our employees and our contractors, we talk to them often. And again, we're business owners and we're in the throes of doing all the things in our business, a lot of delivery. So there's a lot of delivery for clients, and so often they're quick conversations, and it can be this and this, and they build on each other.
And we're so used to our team members become-- we become really comfortable and familiar, we just assume now, because it's been working so well for so long, that everybody's on the same page. But in my experience with the business owners that I support, that's not always the case. It's not always the case that we're on the same page, and often we don't realize that we're no longer on the same page or that we've fallen off that page until a friction point has arisen or until something goes sideways.
And it's common, it happens, it's natural that people's lenses shift, people's value propositions shift because things happen in life, and then all of a sudden, [00:08:00] what was once a comfortable conversation now takes on a different meaning for somebody, and the other person is left none the wiser.
Again, the small habit of having the written record can save not only time, energy, and money here, but relationships. So if we're talking to our team members and we have a conversation around flexible work arrangements or, "Yes, that's okay for next week," or, "Yes, you did that last week. It's fine to do it again this week."
Pause and ask, this is the exercise of throwing net a little wider, " Is that taking on a little more significance than what I'd thought?" And again, out goes the lovely email. " Great chat this morning, Tracey. Really happy with that. Thanks so much." Confirming that that's what's gonna happen next week, but it's not to be an expectation ongoing, or something like confirming that's going to happen next week.
"Thanks so much. Sounds good." Then we will revert to our usual practice, or then we will revert to this, so it's really clear. So then the team member knows, "Oh, great. that's okay for next week, but sure, we'll go back to doing it the usual way the week [00:09:00] after," for example. Similar thing with contractors, particularly in relation to deadlines.
Pushing out deadlines. "Is this okay?" Sometimes those conversations can be really loose because again, people are in the throes of service delivery. So sometimes the conversation's fast and free, something is said, but you both walk away having heard something different. This is where the habit of following up in writing can save you so much time, energy, money and relationships Let me dive in and share with you the reasons I hear business owners tell me as to why they don't have these processes in place, or why they don't have this little habit of following up in writing. The first is because they wanna be nice, and they don't wanna be seen to be too formal, and they don't wanna be seen as untrusting.
And they say to me, "Gosh, we've known each other for so long. It's always been really good. If I do this now, he or she's gonna think I don't trust them. That's not what it is. I don't wanna undermine that." So they don't do it. That's the first one. The second one is, [00:10:00] "I don't have time. I'm just so busy, I don't have time."
Because honestly, hand on heart, I do not think business owners don't do this because they're lazy. Because lazy people typically, in my experience, don't know about yours, they're not business owners. That's full stop. Enough said. It's usually one of those two things. I don't wanna be seen to be untrusting or to be too formal, or I don't have time Let me unpack those.
This is big. First of all, it's not untrusting. It's actually kind. It's actually having a process in place where you are ensuring that misaligned expectations don't arise, or where you're ensuring that you're both on the same page, crystal clear with certainty and clarity, is setting you both up for success.
So you're actually doing yourself both a fabulous service by having habit or a process like this in place because you're reducing the scope of frustration, tension, disappointment in the misaligned [00:11:00] expectations. And if it's something new to you and you don't want to just start doing it with no context, you can of course, have the conversation and you can use this podcast as a launch for having that conversation. " Just heard this. Isn't it great? I'm gonna start doing this." Enough said. Two minutes. Fantastic. So there's that. It's not untrusting. It's actually professional and in my respectful view, you're doing both yourself and the other party a disservice by not having this little habit and process in place because you're leaving yourselves exposed to those misaligned expectations and to things going wrong, and to things going wrong.
and that can cost far more down the track, as I've already touched on. So that's what I say to the trust and the I don't want to be too formal part. It's not that. Flip it. you're setting both parties up for success by doing it. So that's, the first part.
The second part is the I don't have time part, and I get it. I absolutely do, because we're business owners doing all the things. Time is precious, and who has time for that? There are so many things that I can [00:12:00] say about this. I'll keep it short, though. First of all, if you don't make time for it now, you may be forced to make time for it later if something goes sideways or if there's misaligned expectations.
That's the first thing. Much like what we hear about our health. If we don't make time to prioritise our health now, we'll have to make time for sickness later. we've all heard the, the analogies and we've all heard the sayings, so you know where I'm coming from But it's being kind to you, prioritizing your business and putting your business interests first by making the time and carving out the time so as that you don't have to find yourself in a situation later where you are forced to spend the time to attend to an issue which costs you time, energy, it's very stressful, and money.
And money because if you're focusing on this, you're not engaging in revenue-generating activity in your business, and you're not focusing on what's moving the needle in the business. That is money. That's a cost. Worse, of course, if you have to reach out to legal, that's actually going to show up on your balance sheet very quickly.
[00:13:00] So what we want to do is make sure that we can implement a sustainable way to develop this beautiful little habit, which frankly I think is one of the best insurance policies you can have in your business, and it costs you nothing other than a few minutes here and there. There are ways to do it. We can voice note things, we can transcribe things, we can do a little quick note to ourselves on our phone.
We can come back to it in the evening. Or if you're like me, you can just simply allow three minutes after a call to quickly internally do a note, and I have that process in place where I'll sit down and, do a note. I'm not perfect. I'm much better with my clients than I am with team members because that takes a little bit more time to carve out when I'm working on a client matter, the file's already open on my screen, so I can dive in and make my quick note as soon as I get off the Zoom call or as soon as I hang up the phone. That's tried and tested, and my file notes over the course of my career, I can't tell you how important they are, both from a client management perspective, but also for me to go back and make sure, have I addressed everything that the client was [00:14:00] concerned about?
Let me just go back and revisit my notes. It's a quality assurance part from a client service delivery, which I pride myself on, but there's also risk management From an insurer perspective as well and compliance. So there are compliance obligations around that for some professionals like us who are heavily regulated.
But there are ways where we can incorporate it. When I started this process, I had a little sticky note on my computer which was notes with an exclamation and a smiley face. And I would remember through the day, I'd, "Oh gosh, that's right, I had that conversation with such and such this morning. I'll just make a quick note."
And I do it today. What I never do though anymore, well, we should never say never, should we? But I try very hard not to, is to leave it until the following day. I find that that's not setting me up for success. That's not kind for me because then I have to rely on my memory and chances are I've had 25 other tabs open in my brain since then, so my memory's not gonna be as good tomorrow as it is today.
So it's just a quick note, same day, done. I can go back and check it if I need to. [00:15:00] That's my notes. With my clients and with the emails I need to send, very quick. I'm in front of my screen a lot. I do have allocated times where I am in my inbox and so when I'm there, I look over my calendar for the day.
Yes, that's right, we did have that discussion. I'll just send that quick email now. It's beautiful because it helps manage expectations. It gives me such peace of mind, which if you're a longtime listener, you'll know how valuable that is to me. And Touch wood, I don't find I have disgruntled clients.
I've had disgruntled clients earlier in my career. I know what it feels like, and I will do everything in my power to not be there again because it's so unpleasant and it just strips the joy from the day when that happens. So I wanted to share with you how I do it just to give you some insight as to one way that it can happen, and one way you can integrate it into your day without it becoming onerous or burdensome. So I've talked to you about the habit. I've explained to you what it is. I've encouraged you gently to please throw the net a little wider in terms of what you think is potentially [00:16:00] significant or not, because at the end of the day, it's your business and you know.
I've shared with you some ways to integrate the habit. I'll say it again, email is your friend. So before we wrap up, I just wanna give a couple of live examples as to what goes wrong or what can go wrong when we don't have this habit in place. So I've talked to you about the cost, the time, energy, money, and potentially relationships.
Couple of live examples. One, I recently resolved a matter with a beautiful, beautiful client who had such passion in her business and poured her whole heart and soul into her business, and she had misaligned expectations with an employee that she had worked with for many years and treated like family, in her words.
They would gone away many times together as the whole team. They had very close relationships via text very often. There were some very personal events that happened in life, and when they'd happened in the employee's life, my client was there, [00:17:00] was a part of it, was a contributor to it. It really was a close relationship.
But then something happened, and a conversation was had which saw a downward spiral that rocked my client for six, truly. That's the only way I can describe it with accuracy. It rocked her for six. The emotion, the stress, the betrayal, the hurt, all the feelings were there. And no doubt the employee would be feeling something like that too because when something was said, they've both walked away with very different recollections of what that conversation was about.
And so then my client, the business owner, acted a certain way afterwards, consistent with what she understood, and the employee did the same. It became so untenable, the employee lodged a complaint with the Fair Work Commission, and that process then cost my client money, significant money, because we had to sit down and go back and piecemeal What had happened, because there were no emails, no file notes, no written records, none.
[00:18:00] Everything, because the relationship was so good, so my client thought, everything was based on verbal discussions. There was not a single email anywhere that I could rely on. So the time it takes to put evidence together in the absence of writing is really significant because there are so many levels that we need to visit to go down and drill into someone's memory to get something cohesive and usable by way of a statement that we can then rely on.
that was a significant cost to my client in terms of money, but the time and the energy and the stress that she suffered was significant. She wasn't able to work in the business for an extended period because she was focusing on this, and she was so devastated that this had transpired that she wasn't doing revenue-generating activity, and she wasn't focusing on the future, moving the business forward because she was consumed by this.
I'm delighted to be able to say it's resolved favorably, client's relieved and can move forward. But that was such a learning opportunity for her and having proper [00:19:00] processes and systems in place, naturally, something we've spoken about a lot, same as this little habit. And if we had have had this little habit and we had have had regular emails just following up on the discussions that were had, the process involved in dealing with this would have been very different.
But also, I suspect it wouldn't have happened in the first place because the expectations wouldn't have been misaligned. So there's that. That's a very real example that I'm sure everybody listening will be able to relate to on some level, but also hope that it never happens to them.
And guess what? It doesn't have to happen. The other example I'll give is in relation to deliverables and variations, and if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you will have heard me talk about variations of this example time and time again, but it's a classic. Client, service provider, creative.
Creative loves the process. Client is so happy. Creative is in the throes, sleeves up, doing the work, all the things, and having many conversations with the client on the fly. And so when the client says things like, "Can we also do this? Can we also do that? My goodness, I love this so much. [00:20:00] This is amazing.
Thank you." Creative says, "Yes, of course. No problem." And they get in there and they do it. They deliver Everyone's happy, but then the invoice gets issued, and the creative sends the invoice to the client for all the add-ons and the variations because there was out-of-scope work. And the client is shocked because the client didn't expect the invoice because nothing was said along the way.
No conversation about this is how much it's gonna cost, and no email confirming it's out of scope and we'll charge you at the hourly rate. So the client was surprised, shocked, and disappointed to receive the invoice. The creative feels hurt and disrespected that the client doesn't value the work, and it was in the agreement.
It was in the agreement that I sent you at the beginning that anything out of scope would incur a fee. The client, though, assumed that because nothing was said, it was within scope. This is the misaligned expectations, and this one happens more often than I care to count, and I'm sure you have experienced this or someone you know has experienced this, or you've heard of someone experiencing this because it's so common.
So the little [00:21:00] habit of following up in writing could have avoided all of that. The first time the client says, "My goodness, this is so wonderful. Thank you. Can we also do this?" The creative with a habit and a little process later on at the end of the working day after they're out of the zone, the creative zone, sends the email to the client.
"Hi, Tracey. Great to see you this morning. I'm so happy you're pleased with that. Confirming you've asked me to do this. Delighted to. This will be the cost." That's it. The client then has an opportunity to say, "Oh, I didn't realize it was gonna cost any more. No, thank you." Or, " Yes, please go ahead, no problem." So guess what?
Either way is a win because the business owner's not gonna be working for free, and the client's expectations are managed, and they're really clear. So if they give the go-ahead, at the end when they receive the invoice, they're expecting it, so they pay it. That's it. So you can see how easy it is to avoid those contentious issues of the client now saying, "Oh gosh, well, I'm not paying that.
I didn't agree to that." And then the creative saying, "Well, you know, you need to." Guess what? Time, energy, [00:22:00] money, and now potentially the destruction of a relationship. And from the business owner, no repeat work, no positive review, and we all know that unhappy clients tell more people than happy clients, so there's business risk.
From the client's perspective, a project that was bringing so much joy is now tainted, and they feel really let down by the creative. It's not a win-win. It's a lose-lose. So I'm hoping you can see why I'm so passionate about the little habit of making sure that you have a written trail. Put it in writing.
It's the classic saying that we all hear along the lines of, If a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, did it really make a noise? We've all heard something like that. Well, this is the same.
If a conversation's had but it's not followed up in writing, did it really happen? Because what you might think was agreed on or, or said or exchanged could be very different to what the other person thinks was agreed on or exchanged. So that's where we are. So I'm hoping you've been able to take something from this.
There is so much gold here that I've wanted to [00:23:00] share in terms of the really small things that you can do now to have the biggest impact and the biggest saving later. This is so important for managing our business, our time, our energy, our relationships, and our money.
That's why I wanted to do a whole episode on it. I hope you've loved it. I've loved delivering this. You can probably tell. So the little habit, keep it in writing, have a process. It is a little habit, a couple of minutes each time to send the email or make the note can save you so, so, so much more down the track because you are protecting your business and you're setting both parties up for success, and that in my mind is just a win-win.
Thank you so much for listening. If you've loved this episode, if you've taken something from it, I would be so grateful if you would share it with others because that's how we get the podcast into the ears of even more business owners. I'll catch you next time. [00:24:00]
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