It’s important sometimes to face issues when they come up – so I will here.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out so well with a particular client.  We did our level best, but due to a scheduling mistake, we definitely upset Dennis Fassett.  It was not our finest hour.

And our apologies for our honest mistake, which now we need to talk about in public.

I had inadvertently double-booked time (as I had mistakenly written down 11a for my time with Dennis, because of a previous conversation around recording things on his lunch break) on the day we were to record between the home and the work studio.  However, I canceled the one recording and got downtown as fast as I could.  We would of had plenty of time that morning, as I live 15 minutes away from work, to lay down the tracks we needed to, and then the plan was to wrap up the re-edit of the first episode to get it up that night.

I attempted to explain that, and that I was only going to be a few minutes behind, but that was impossible because Dennis wouldn’t pick up his phone when I called him four times that day.  I was already going to tell him about the discount I would give him for our scheduling mistake upon my arrival…  regardless of the fact that the first contact I had with him that morning was him texting me to tell me that he was running a bit behind because of a car problem.

My phone was off because I was recording at home earlier.  I don’t leave my phone on when I’m recording for interruption and technical reasons.  Even if I put it on silent, the GSM radio waves interfere with recording equipment something fierce.  After all, and this is my mistake, as I had him down for 11a.

We worked 11+ hours on the project, delivering outlines, consulting, graphics, paying license fees for music, etc.  I was more than willing to work something out, but as email is an imperfect medium for communicating, and it didn’t work so well this time.

I probably shouldn’t of emailed anything and just kept trying Dennis until he answered (which I proceeded to do, and he has not has answered a call from me since).

As to “pitching services,” we’re a business.  I won’t apologize for doing that, and I included more because I was asked to during a lunch meeting.

As to “learning about his business,” that’s part of our responsibility, but also part of the work that’s involved in creating great content.  If you had a copywriter who didn’t take the time to learn about your business as part of their work, then they’d deliver a pretty bad product.  And that takes time, time that most agencies I’ve worked with charge for, as they should.  This was a flat-rate project, and whatever time I took to learn or needed to I was willing to spend, even if it put me “in the hole” in an hours estimate at first because that’s what makes great stuff.

And yes, with the holidays, things got busy.  But we had agreed on adjusted time lines together, were ready to roll, and release that night.

I’m not going to post the first episode because it’s not our place to without permission, but I gotta say, Dennis has some pretty compelling and interesting content.  And I’d still tell you that if you want to learn about cash flow real estate, go talk to him.  He can teach you a lot, despite our issue on this matter; you should seriously consider the $500+ for his two day seminar if you want to learn about how to make money with property in this economy.

I apologize for any mistakes that we made.  Nobody’s perfect, and I sure am not.  Dennis, you know how to find me to work this out, I’m going to be running around taking care of things for tonite’s tweetup, but I’ll make sure to get back to you if I miss you.  And I will leave my comments open for anyone for anything respectful and cooperative.